


Sadness Into Kindness

by Aesoleucian



Series: Under Waterfall's Umbrella [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-09-07
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:22:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 20,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aesoleucian/pseuds/Aesoleucian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Being a jinchuuriki sucks. Being a missing-nin sucks more. What sucks the most is when criminals are following you around trying to murder you. Well, at least Gaara has his friends. Kind of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back in business once again! This installment is named after the first opening theme that has Gaara in it, because I'm the cheesy kind of person who names all their fanfiction after Naruto song lyrics and also because it's somewhat thematically appropriate. 
> 
> Oh yeah also everyone uses she pronouns for Itachi in this, because salticidae told me to.

 

When Gaara first went there, the shared mindspace of the bijuu was black and blank. Over the last two years the people who meet there have gradually added decorations: Fuu initially made it look like an enormous treehouse, and she fought over whether it was dignified enough with Son Gokuu until everyone agreed they should meet around a fire, like the bijuu used to. Choumei added paper festival lanterns overhead, Gaara soft rugs around the fire, and Kokuou faint stars that suggest there is a sky instead of nothingness. Now it’s a very welcoming place.

When Gaara opens his eyes there and looks up, the stars are gone. In their place is a field of solid black with stylized red clouds bordered in white.

Son is already there, staring at the sky, but Roushi isn’t.

“The hell’s going on?” asks Shukaku. “You must have felt it too.”

Son Gokuu looks down from the sky and says, “We were not with them. Roushi is trying to track Han now, from the last place we saw him a month ago.”

“Do you have any idea what _that_ means?” Gaara gestures up at the clouds. “It almost looks like something you would see on a kimono.

Son Gokuu looks down and frowns. “I have not seen it before, although Roushi may have. I will look into it. But there is someone powerful enough to subdue a jinchuuriki, and we cannot guarantee they will not come for us too. Roushi says we should join forces to make sure we are prepared in case of another attack.”

“You think I _need_ your help?” screeches Shukaku, taking a step toward Son Gokuu. “It’s not like Han and Kokuou were _tough_. We can take on anyone in the world and come out on top!”

“Can the same be said of Son Gokuu and Roushi?” asks Gaara. “Perhaps they need _our_ help. Roushi has always been cautious, and it seems to have worked for him so far.”

Shukaku looks down at Gaara with slitted eyes, like he knows he’s being manipulated, but shrugs his sloping shoulders and says, “Fine. Where are you right now?”

“Western Thunder Country, heading west.” Son Gokuu is almost as proud as Shukaku, so he must also understand he’s not truly being insulted, because he looks amused rather than angry.

“We’re a ways north of Iwa,” says Gaara. “We should meet near Taki. I’ll leave a message for Saiken, telling her where, in case she comes here later.”

“A message that’s not shit,” mutters Shukaku. “One with actual words in it.”

Gaara has been staying at an inn carved into a cliff face on the coast. The innkeeper is a stern woman who let him stay in exchange for excavating a new wing. She doesn’t know he’s a jinchuuriki—if she did, no doubt, she would call a platoon of ninjas from Iwa to chase him away. But she has been kind in her own way.

Gaara leaves the inn immediately when he comes out of his trance, steps out of the window three stories up onto a platform of sand. He flies as straight as he can toward Taki, and it only takes him two and a half days to get there.

He arrives at the Uchiha apartment at nearly midnight, but the light is still on in the kitchen so he knocks on the window. Itachi and Shisui look surprised, but Shisui gets up to open the window for him.

“It’s a bit late, isn’t it?” says Shisui. “To what do we owe the pleasure?”

“I’m sorry for coming unexpectedly. Is Fuu in the village right now?”

Itachi frowns slightly. “She’s asleep in the other room. What’s going on? Sit down and I’ll make you some tea.”

Gaara sits, and says, “The five-tails has been killed or sealed, as well as her jinchuuriki, Han. We don’t know yet who did it, but if they’re powerful enough to take down a jinchuuriki we may all be in danger. I’m meeting Roushi, and hopefully Utakata, near here, although we won’t impose on you. I have a few questions I’d like to ask you now, though.”

“Go on,” says Itachi, leaning back against the stove. Her information network is one of the best Gaara knows; although she pretends to be only an administrative assistant she is also a formidable spymaster.

“First, have you ever come across a pattern of red clouds on a black field?” He forms some sand into an approximation of the stylized cloud on the table. “They look something like this. It’s a clue Kokuou gave us before she died, but we don’t know what it means.”

Itachi leans forward to study it, and hums thoughtfully. “I think there are some missing-nin who wear that pattern. I keep a recent bingo book in my room, I can get it for you. Shisui, don’t let the kettle wake up Fuu and Sasuke, please.”

“Aye-aye,” says Shisui, saluting lazily from beside Gaara, where he’s drinking his own tea. “Gaara, you know this through your vaguely mystical bijuu brain network, right?” Gaara nods. “Why didn’t she just say who did it?”

“We don’t know,” says Gaara. “Son… The four-tails and Shukaku felt it almost immediately when she died, and we entered the shared mindspace to find that she had changed sky to that pattern. Shukaku was extremely put out that she didn’t leave a note.”

 _Shut your fucking face_ , says Shukaku.

“He’s still put out,” says Gaara, smiling.

Itachi comes back into the kitchen, puts the bingo book down in front of Gaara, and takes the kettle off the heat to start making tea. “Start near the end,” she says. “They must be S-rank if they can take down a jinchuuriki.”

Gaara finds them grouped together very close to the end—they all have bounties above thirty million ryou. “They’re listed as belonging to an organization called Akatsuki.”

“A former revolutionary party founded in Amegakure thirty years ago,” says Itachi as she sets down Gaara’s tea. “Recently, that is, in the last ten years, they have been taking large long-standing bounties and high-paying missions. Especially…” She flips back one page and points to a man whose face is covered. “This one, Kinyaku Kakuzu.”

“Perhaps they were after Han for his bounty, then,” says Gaara. “He has been a missing-nin for at least ten years.”

Itachi frowns and looks back a few more pages to where Han’s entry lists him as _12 800 000 ryou, alive only_.

“So probably no.” Shisui leans over to look at the book. “Hey, Gaara, do you know how much you’re worth?”

“I’ve checked, but not recently. I think I’m still A-rank.” Shukaku was furious when he found out they weren’t S-rank. Gaara is willing to give it time, and anyway, he’s happier fighting less skilled hunters.

“Ah, see! You’re actually worth two million ryou more than Han,” says Shisui.

“He used to be more,” Itachi observes. “They lower the price once they stop caring. Gaara, do you want to go to bed? I’m getting quite tired. You can have the couch if you don’t want to wake Fuu and Sasuke.”

“Thank you,” says Gaara. “I’ll finish my tea and go to sleep.”

Shisui stretches and yawns dramatically, ruffling Gaara’s hair as he passes. “Me too. Seeya tomorrow, Gaara. C’mon, Itachi.”

As he drinks his tea, Gaara makes note of all the jinchuuriki’s entries. It comforts him, a little, that Naruto and Fuu are worth almost nothing.


	2. Chapter 2

When he checks in on the bijuu mindspace in the morning, Saiken has left a reply to his note: _We can get to Taki pretty quick! Should be about five days if Uta can keep up a good pace. See you there!_ But there’s no indication of when it was written. At minimum, it will be another three days until Utakata gets here.

Sasuke, the only true morning person among the Uchiha of Taki, is making pancakes when Gaara sits up. He must hear it, because he waves his spatula over his shoulder and says, “Do you want strawberries or green tea in your pancakes?”

“I don’t care,” says Gaara. For the last two weeks he’s been eating nothing but hardtack, which is what the innkeeper was willing to give him for free, and scavenged mushrooms; in the past three days he hardly ate anything at all. “I might eat a lot though, if it’s okay.”

“We’re a family of ninjas,” says Sasuke, glancing sideways at him. “We always eat a lot.”

Sasuke has probably never had to worry about having enough to eat for a months at a time, but every ninja knows what it’s like to go hungry for a week or so on missions. Gaara hasn’t told the Uchiha in detail about the unglamorous life of a missing-nin, because he prefers that they don’t know. _He_ doesn’t even like to think about it.

Even Sasuke ends up impressed by the number of pancakes Gaara eats; by the time Itachi comes out of her and Shisui’s room, squinting sleepily, he has eaten all eight of the thick pancakes Sasuke made. They had both green tea and strawberries.

“Please tell me you’re going to give it a rest so me and Itachi can have some,” says Sasuke. “You win, all right? I take back what I said. You eat way more than a normal ninja. Are you starving yourself or something?” Itachi shoots him a _look_. “Oh, uh, right. Missing-nin.”

“It’s all right,” says Gaara quietly. “I’m full.” Itachi gives Sasuke _another_ nasty look, for some reason, which makes Gaara wonder if somehow it was the wrong answer.

About half an hour later Roushi knocks on the door, obviously not having slept for days. He can barely keep his eyes open, and when he’s standing still he sways dangerously. Gaara helps him over to the table, where he stares keenly at Sasuke’s back.

Sasuke sighs theatrically and starts putting pancakes in front of him.

“Sorry to ask this,” he mumbles, “but can I pass out on your couch for a couple hours? I ran all the way here from Thunder Country. I promise I’ll be out of your hair as soon as I’m functional.”

“We should put a sign outside our door that says ‘jinchuuriki rest stop’,” Sasuke says, though Gaara thinks he’s amused rather than angry. “We seem to attract you like flies.”

“Blame your sister,” says Gaara.

“I blame _you_ ,” Sasuke tells him.

“We’ll try to leave before Utakata gets here,” says Gaara apologetically. “I don’t think Shibuki-san would be happy with three missing-nin hiding in his village.”

“He puts up with it because there’s nothing he can do to stop you, and you’re polite enough to go away when he tells you to,” is Itachi’s analysis. “As long as you don’t stay long enough to make other villages suspicious, he won’t mind.”

“We’ll be gone by the end of the day,” Gaara tells her.

“Fuu will be disappointed,” says Sasuke.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in re “Sasuke is the only true morning person:” Itachi habitually got up very early while he lived in Konoha because he liked how peaceful it was before dawn when he didn’t have to see anyone. Also, getting very little sleep was, according to Fugaku, a virtuous quality for a ninja. Now he’s not short on peace and he’s not a ninja, so he can sleep as much as he wants. A lot of the time he’ll sleep around twelve hours because his body is slowly destroying itself via ninja tuberculosis or something. Anyway, the point is that Itachi loves sleeping and sweets, and he just wants everyone to be nice to each other. In this way he reminds me of Sailor Moon.


	3. Chapter 3

When Roushi wakes up, Fuu jumps on him excitedly and starts asking questions about where he’s been, what he does for fun, and the people he may have met. She has talked to him before, in the bijuu mindspace, but they’re not often there at the same time, certainly not recently.

While she’s interrogating him, Itachi and Sasuke start on making and sealing a truly enormous amount of food. Gaara asks if it’s all right to take so much, but Shisui smiles at him and says, “I take S-rank missions and Itachi’s the headman’s personal assistant-slash-spymaster. We’re not exactly poor. And besides, you look like a twig! A gust of wind would knock you over if you weren’t so stubborn. I’d be a bad host if I didn’t try to fatten you up. Just make it last, okay?”

In the end, there’s too much that everyone wants to talk about and they don’t leave. Gaara and Roushi get to take showers (Gaara feels almost like a _person_ after a shower) and they all go to spar outside the village. Roushi has something of a handicap because Fuu forbids him from setting anything on fire, but his forty years of experience allow him to defeat two young jinchuuriki and one prodigy. Sasuke has been talking about how he’s ready to become a jounin, and Gaara believes him. He’s no older than Gaara, but at fifteen he’s better than most of the hunters that have come after Gaara’s A-rank bounty.

Shisui and Itachi talk them into staying another night, and this time Gaara gets to sleep with Fuu and Sasuke, if only because Roushi needs the couch. It’s uncomfortably warm and his paranoia keeps waking him up, but he’s happy to be with them. Once every month or two is not terribly often for friendly human contact, after all. He’s considering asking Roushi or Utakata to travel with him once this is over. Neither of them loves hugs as much as Fuu, but another human presence would still be welcome.

He gets up early and finds Roushi already awake, staring out the window at the mist rising off the lake. “I was at the fire this morning,” he says softly. “Utakata will be here in two days.”

“We should probably leave today,” says Gaara. He knows neither of them wants to. Despite how long Roushi has spent alone, he likes Fuu and Shisui a lot, possibly even more than he likes being well-fed.

“We should.” Roushi sighs heavily. “I had no idea what having a family was like until I met them, you know. Until I met you. Thanks, kid.”

“Neither did I,” Gaara murmurs. “It’s so hard to tell if we’re truly imposing on them. I feel guilty for staying this long.”

Roushi puts a heavy hand on Gaara’s shoulder, silently conveying his understanding. After a long pause he says, “Do you think we should make them breakfast or something? As thanks?”

Gaara stares at him, wide-eyed. “I have no idea how to make actual food.”

Roushi hides his mouth behind one hand as he laughs. “Me neither. I can just about keep from burning a rabbit over a campfire, but these fancy pots and pans they have? Those are just confusing.” Gaara laughs too, quietly.

After a while of staring into the mist, the sun starts to rise behind them, and Gaara says, “Where are we going to go once Utakata gets here?”

“Does it matter?” asks Roushi, glancing sideways at him. “Three jinchuuriki can go wherever they want.”

“Where do we want to go?”

Roushi sighs. “I don’t want to go anywhere, but I don’t think the headman would take that well. Especially since we’d be bringing an unknown number of S-rank missing-nin to his doorstep. I have a couple safehouses, in various places in the wilderness.”

“To cower in?” Gaara mutters. Roushi looks around at him, surprised. “If we hide away in a safehouse, they’ll only go after someone else. It will probably be Fuu or Naruto, since they’re the least experienced. As far as I know, Naruto’s still away from his village, so he’s even more vulnerable.”

“You’re saying we should lure them out and take care of them ourselves,” Roushi says flatly. “I didn’t get to be forty-five years old by drawing attention to myself, Gaara. Most jinchuuriki don’t live until they’re thirty, and it’s because of stupid stunts like this. They think they’re invulnerable because they can borrow the power of a bijuu, and then they find out the hard way that they’re as mortal as anyone. I don’t want to see that happen to you, and I’m sure as hell not letting it happen to me.”

“We wouldn’t be drawing their attention,” Gaara insists. “We may already have it, and we can’t hide forever. Do you think they’ll just give up if they can’t find us for a few weeks or months?”

Roushi scowls at the lake, where the mist is starting to burn away. “We’ll talk about this with—” He stiffens just as Gaara feels a swooping sensation in his gut, like falling backward with nothing to catch him. Just like when Kokuou vanished from the mindspace the bijuu share. It must be even stronger and more disorienting for the bijuu.

“Shukaku,” says Gaara, “was that who I think it was?”

_Ugh. Yeah. Seems like Saiken up and got herself sealed. Guess we don’t have to wait for Utakata any more, huh?_

Roushi looks around sharply, coming out of a trance. “She left a note, at least. Says it was a blond guy with explosive clay and a guy with a huge cleaver, both wearing the red clouds. She went into a little more detail about their powers, then wrote that Utakata had passed out and she had to go.”

Gaara goes to the table to pick up the bingo book that has been lying there since two nights ago. In the section on Akatsuki, he finds a blond Iwa missing-nin—Sakuretsu Deidara—and a man who used to be one of the Seven Swordsmen of Kiri, Biwa Juuzou.  The bingo book has no information at all on their abilities, possibly because no-one has lived to report back after meeting them.

“Well,” says Roushi gloomily, “at least I can tell you a bit about the explosion release bloodline ability. Might give us a chance of surviving them.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deidara doesn’t have a canon surname, so I picked Sakuretsu. It means “explosion” and I think it sounds very beautiful, so it’s fitting for him. Kakuzu got Kinyaku, which I mostly picked for the sound. It may or may not mean “about gold” as in “he is always thinking about gold.” Probably not, but at least it sounds cool.
> 
> The picture is Roushi sparring with the kids; Sasuke is still working on his lightning release techniques. No clue how he gets that metal thing to stay on his face, though, or like, what it is...


	4. Chapter 4

By the time Sasuke wakes up, Roushi has invented pancakes from first principles, and Gaara has invented burnt pancakes. He apologizes and eats the burnt ones while Sasuke goes to open the window to let out the smoke. It’s not soon enough, though, because Itachi wakes up with a coughing fit that makes it sound like she’s going to vomit up her lungs. Gaara guiltily leaves the apartment to sit on the steps outside.

Itachi comes out to tell him in a raspy voice that she’ll be all right, but she looks tired. Gaara tells her what happened to Utakata, and _then_ she looks exhausted. “I’m very sorry, but I think you will have to leave. It would be too risky for the village if you and Roushi stayed here.  I’ll ask to have Fuu suspended from active duty to keep her out of danger, but perhaps you can contact Naruto. Isn’t his team training with Jiraiya of the Sannin?”

Gaara has no idea whether this is true. Itachi is the spymaster, not him. He shrugs, and nearly drops into a trance before hesitating. He hasn’t seen Naruto or the nine-tails in mindspace at all, and from the fact that Naruto doesn’t call his bijuu by name it’s likely that they don’t trust each other enough to enter it yet. “Can I borrow one of your crows? I don’t know if I’ll be able to contact them the normal way.”

“It will take a long time to find him from the air,” Itachi warns him. “But I’ll tell Suchi to check Konoha first, in case he went back already. She’ll have to search for his chakra.” She tries and fails to suppress another coughing fit, hunching over her legs. When she sits up again her eyes are watering and her face is flushed.

“Are you… all right?” asks Gaara.

“The medic nin are working on it,” she murmurs. “There’s no need for you to worry. But you should start getting ready to send your letter and go. I’ll summon Suchi for you and then go to inform Shibuki-san of the threat Akatsuki poses.”

Itachi leaves without eating, and her crow sits on Shisui’s head while he’s making pancakes that are actually edible. Gaara sends her off with his message: _Naruto, have you felt anything strange recently? Han and Utakata have been captured or killed by an organization called Akatsuki. Roushi and I are going to start looking for you in Fire Country. If you can, leave a note in mindspace telling us where you are. Watch out for ninjas in black cloaks with a red cloud pattern. –Gaara._

He and Roushi leave as soon as Fuu finishes making them promise to stay safe. Gaara carries them both on his sand because it takes very little chakra, comparatively, and they go toward Konoha. Because they’re travelling as the crow flies, so to speak, Suchi will know where to find them if she gets a reply from Naruto.

Surprisingly, though, Son Gokuu finds Naruto before the crow does. “Son can feel his chakra,” says Roushi suddenly, on the second day. “He can’t be more than an hour east of here.” Gaara doesn’t feel either Naruto or the nine-tails, but that’s not surprising. Shukaku is no sensor.

They land near the border of Fire Country with Rice Country, where Naruto’s team seems to be passed out in a field. Nearby an old man is writing something on a scroll, but he jumps to his feet when he sees them. “What do you want?” he says loudly. “You don’t want to mess with me. I’ll have you know that I’m the Sage of Mount Myo—”

“We know who you are, Jiraiya-san,” says Roushi with a long-suffering look. “We came to talk to Naruto about the attacks by Akatsuki members.”

Jiraiya straightens up and frowns. “Who’s being attacked by Akatsuki members? And who the hell are you?”

“To answer both of your questions,” says Roushi, “jinchuuriki. They’ve already taken two missing-nin jinchuuriki. The two of us are probably the next on their list, and then they’ll start coming after the ones who are out on missions. Like Naruto.”

“Dammit,” mutters Jiraiya. “It’s impossible to get good intelligence on Akatsuki. So this is what they were planning? OI, NARUTO. GET YOUR LAZY BUTT UP AND COME OVER HERE.”

From ten meters away, hidden by the tall grass, Naruto can be faintly heard saying, “Whaaaat? You said we could take an hour-long break!”

“SOME FRIENDS OF YOURS SHOWED UP AND THEY SAID SOMEONE’S TRYING TO KILL YOU.”

“Geez, all right, I’m coming.” His head appears in the stalks of grass and he comes over, rubbing his eyes. “Oh, Gaara! And, uh, you! What’s going on?”

“Roushi, four-tails.” He sounds put out that Naruto doesn’t know him, although as far as Gaara knows they’ve never met. “Have you noticed a feeling of loss recently?”

“Yeah, every time Pervert Sage makes me skip breakfast. What, you mean like, a magic feeling? Not really.”

“How long have you been training this boy?” Roushi turns an accusing glare on Jiraiya. “You still haven’t taught him to talk to his bijuu properly? Even when I hated mine I could _talk_ to him. We could get so much more done if he could meet us in mindspace.”

“Why would I be the one to teach him to talk to a bijuu?” asks Jiraiya, looking sullen. “I’ve been trying to teach him how to keep it from _killing_ him. Or me.”

“I’m right here, you know,” says Naruto. Roushi and Jiraiya ignore him, apparently more interested in getting into an argument.

Gaara approaches him and says quietly, “While they’re arguing, can I ask whether you’ve ever spoken to the nine-tails?”

“Uh, yeah, I guess. He really doesn’t like me, though. And he’s kind of creepy.”

“Remember who my bijuu is? If Shukaku and I can become friends, I have no doubt you can make peace with the nine-tails.”

“Well, _maybe._ What’s this mindspace thing? That sounds kinda cool.”

Gaara looks over at Roushi and Jiraiya, who look a few seconds away from coming to blows, and then at Naruto’s teammates, who have finally gotten up to see what’s going on. He sighs. It seems they’ll have plenty of time to talk about it.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do people still warn for swearing? I'm very unhip and I just don't know. Anyway, Shukaku is in this one and he swears a lot.

“Since you can at least talk to the nine-tails, can you ask him to go into mindspace himself, even if he won’t take you?” Gaara asks.

Naruto runs a hand through his hair, grimacing. “Geez, I’ll try. He’s a real bastard, though.”

_He is_ , agrees Shukaku. _Can’t you make Son talk to him instead? I hate him_.

“If Son is in mindspace already, certainly,” says Gaara. “Otherwise, I don’t really want to interrupt Roushi.” Naruto gives him an odd look, and he realizes it’s not considered normal to talk to people no-one else can hear. He didn’t think he had to be normal around Naruto. “Shukaku says he doesn’t like the nine-tails either. He doesn’t want to talk to him, even if it means he gets to show off how superior his jinchuuriki is.”

_You think you’re really clever, but you’re not. I can see through your shitty manipulation like a window._

“So you’ll do it?”

_Fucking fine, shut up. Like he’s gonna listen to me anyway._

“Uh, he said okay,” reports Naruto. “This is _super_ weird. I think he thinks I’m playing a prank on him.”

Shukaku pulls Gaara into the bijuu mindspace, where the nine-tailed fox is sitting with crossed arms, glaring around at everything. “You’ve made it so _cozy_ ,” he says, sounding disgusted. “It stinks of humans in here.”

“Shut the fuck up, bastard,” growls Shukaku. “You’re not here to talk shit about the interior design, all right? These dumbass humans just want a way to warn you in case someone tries to kill you. Don’t know if you noticed, but your jinchuuriki’s not such hot shit. He looks like he’d die in about five seconds against Akatsuki.”

“I really don’t care what you say about the kid,” says the nine-tails, eying Shukaku with distaste. “I completely agree with you that he’s an easy target, but I can take care of myself.”

“Why are you literally the dumbest shit ever?” groans Shukaku. “You think you’re _so_ much better than us just because you have more tails. These guys probably specialize in hunting bijuu, you know that, right? Just merge with the damn kid and bring him here and we can all go home.”

“I have better things to do than argue with you.” The nine-tails’ lip curls. “Like sleep, or stare blankly at the walls of the sewer where I live. Or plot my escape.”

“Or perhaps you could be more proactive,” Gaara suggests, “and make your cage into a home so you won’t be miserable until you do escape.”

The nine-tails leans down to look at Gaara. His eye is as wide as Gaara is tall. “Oh-ho, Shukaku, this one’s got a silver tongue. Is that why you haven’t managed to break him yet?”

“Haven’t felt like it,” Shukaku snarls. He brings a massive hand down behind Gaara, enclosing him with two of his fingers. “He’s occasionally useful, even if he doesn’t like blood much. Just talk to your damn jinchuuriki for five minutes, all right? I’m sick of your whining.” And he leaves the mindspace, taking Gaara with him.

_I fucking hate him_ , he grumbles in Gaara’s head. “I can see why,” Gaara murmurs to him. Shukaku starts in on a long rant Gaara’s heard before, about how the nine-tails thinks he’s _such_ hot shit and how Shukaku could kick his ass in five seconds. He tunes it out and looks at Naruto, who is staring blankly at the sky, pupils contracted to pinpricks. He probably _is_ talking to the nine-tails, then.

Behind them, Roushi has finally calmed down. Jiraiya seems to have brought sake but no cups, because they’re taking turns drinking out of a bottle.

“Sooooo… what’s going on here?” asks Uchiha Haromo, who sat down a while ago next to Naruto, and now looks bored. “Is this some kind of jinchuuriki party we’re not invited to?”

Gaara turns to her and bows. “Sorry, Uchiha-san, Haruno-san. There’s an emergency that may soon involve people trying to kill Naruto. We’re trying to set up a way to contact him if we find out more information.”

“I almost miss the times when people were trying to kill _me_ ,” sighs Haromo. “It made me feel important, at least.” Gaara gives her what he hopes is an unimpressed look. He would _love_ it if no-one were trying to kill him. “Oh, uh, maybe that was kind of a jerk thing to say. Sorry, Gaara. You’d be important to me even if no-one was trying to kill you, I promise.” She reminds him of Sasuke: completely tactless, yet somehow endearing anyway.

Naruto gasps and staggers, and they all look around. Sakura props him up until he can get his balance again. “Thanks, Sakura-chan!” he says. “I don’t know how you did it, Gaara, but you got him to actually talk to me! He only threatened to kill me, like, twice!” He grins. “I think we’re friends now. Oh, he’s still a creepy bastard, though.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

Jiraiya assures Gaara and Roushi that he can protect his genin, and tells them to leave before he gets tired of looking at Roushi’s ugly face, which is _probably_ a joke. They move on; in the absence of any other plan, they’re headed for one of Roushi’s safehouses. When they stop to make camp, Roushi goes to gather deadfall and Gaara sits in the clearing, meditating.

In the bijuu mindspace Fuu and Choumei are talking to Naruto about the last mission they went on. Or he might have just asked for embarrassing stories about Sasuke, because that’s what he’s getting. The nine-tails is nowhere to be seen. He’s probably skulking at the edges of this small reality, since he hates humans so much. Although Gaara has never considered jinchuuriki to be quite human. He’s certainly never considered himself to be human.

“Gaara! Shukaku!” Fuu bounces to her feet from the thick pile of rugs on the floor. “You’re still all right! So’re Roushi and Son, right?” He nods. “Great! I was telling Naruto about that time Sasuke didn’t sleep for three days on a dare and fell asleep in Shibuki’s office.”

“Fuu! You ruined the punchline!” says Naruto, though he doesn’t sound too upset about it. “It’s nice to see you again, Gaara. I was pretty pissed at the Pervert Sage when he made you guys leave so soon, ya know.”

“Where’s the nine-tails?” asks Gaara, sitting down by them under Choumei’s iridescent wings.

“He’s invisible or something?” says Naruto, squinting uncertainly. “I dunno. He’s a real stick in the mud. I don’t think he’s ever been to a party in his life, how sad is that? And he’s like a thousand years old or something!”

Fuu laughs. “It’s pretty hard for a bijuu to go to a human party, though, isn’t it? You’d have to be real careful not to step on anyone.”

“I’ve managed before,” says Choumei in her deep, buzzing voice. “I mostly sat down and talked to the humans. It was a festival in my honor, you know. I’m very lucky. Some people used to call me a god of luck.”

“Can you _actually_ do luck magic?” asks Naruto. “That’s so cool!”

“ _GAARA!_ ” Shukaku screams. “ _THOSE BASTARDS ARE HERE, COME ON!_ ”

Gaara blinks, disoriented because suddenly he’s in a forest and not by a fire, but gets to his feet as quickly as he can. “Where are they?”

 _Five o’clock. I can_ feel _how much they want us dead. Let’s SLAUGHTER these fuckers._

He spins around and sees his sand shield come up to block an enormous—sword? The man wielding it, tall and blue-skinned (scaled?), is pushed back a few meters but springs right back toward Gaara. Behind that man is a hunched pile of cloth that may contain a person, or not. Gaara doesn’t have time to register more than the red-on-black cloud pattern before the sharklike man hits his sand shield again with the force of a battering ram. Gaara uses a feint, stabbing at the shark, to spread sand over the ground behind him. The next time his shield comes up to block a strike, he creates a sand clone and slides down into the earth. _Shukaku_ , he thinks as loudly as he can. He’s never talked to Shukaku except out loud. _Can you contact Son and Roushi?_

 _I’m already on it, what d’you think I’ve been doing? I can fight_ and _talk at the same time._

 _You’re incredible_ , says Gaara gratefully.

 _I know_ , says Shukaku, smug.

Up above, Gaara can see through his sand clone’s Third Eye, the other Akatsuki member has revealed a steel scorpion tail and is trying to drill through the sand shield with it. Gaara brings up the sand on the ground, trying to catch the two in Desert Coffin, but they dodge every time it’s about to close on them. He creates another sand clone underground and lets it burst up under the scorpion as he dissolves the other one. With any luck they’ll think it’s the real thing. He sees, when the clone nearly breaks its fist on the underside of the scorpion, that the entire thing is a reinforced wooden puppet.

 _Where is the puppeteer?_ he asks Shukaku. _Can you feel his malice?_

Shukaku snorts. _No, he barely cares about killing you. This close I can feel his chakra, though. He’s inside that thing. Yeah, don’t worry, I’ll tell Roushi. He’s coming._

The shark hits his clone in the gut, spikes standing out of the sword, and Gaara feels the chakra drain from the clone until it’s just a pillar of sand that collapses onto the ground. Does the sword have the ability to absorb chakra?

For a moment, Gaara can’t see what’s going on aboveground, and then the earth _cracks_ , nearly crushing him. His sand shields him, but the ground that was hiding him is split open, showing him the shark and the scorpion silhouetted against the sky. He springs upward on a column of sand, using the rest from the ground to distract the Akatsuki so he can get free. By the time he looks down again, the scorpion is shooting hundreds of senbon that stick uselessly in his sand shield. The sand spits them back out at the shark, who blocks them with his sword.

Gaara is very glad he’s hovering when a wave of lava surges over the two Akatsuki members. He closes his eyes briefly to give thanks that Roushi is here. But a dome of black rock has formed in the lava, as if it’s being cooled from inside—and it breaks open in a rush of water that flashes into steam. Both of the men inside are unharmed.

“You really want to fight both of them?” says the shark, propping his sword on his shoulder. “It’s gonna be a pain in the ass and someone will probably die.”

“It will be you,” growls the scorpion. “And that would be inconvenient. Let’s go.” They both flicker away, leaving a clearing full of flaming trees and cracked earth. Gaara smothers the fires with his sand and lowers himself to the ground.

“Why’d you put those out?” asks Roushi, strolling into the clearing. “You do remember I left to get firewood, right? How are we going to heat up our dinner?”

Gaara stares at him, trying and failing to suppress laughter. “I wasn’t thinking,” he says with a smile. “You did find some firewood, though, right?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why is Sasori paired with Kisame, you ask? Well, since we have Juuzo instead of Itachi, there are a lot of Kiri missing-nin in Akatsuki. I thought it would be sensible to separate them--you don't want they being more loyal to each other than to Akatsuki, after all. So even though Sasori and Deidara were thematically delightful, it's a better way to run a criminal organization if they're not partners.


	7. Chapter 7

Roushi goes to the mindspace to tell Naruto and Fuu about the two who attacked them. With their borrowed bingo book they find that they are are Hoshigaki Kisame ( _another_ one of the Seven Swordsmen of Kiri) and Sasori of the Red Sand. Gaara wonders about Sasori, who has a name Gaara has earned. He thinks he heard his brother talking about Sasori, the famous puppeteer, at one point, although Kankurou almost never talked _to_ Gaara. Roushi wonders about the apparently very high defection rate of the Seven Swordsmen.

And Gaara thinks about Utakata, who suffered some very bad treatment at the hands of his master in Kiri. He always refused to talk about it, and now he’s dead or imprisoned. Gaara wants to see him again so much that his chest aches a little bit. It took Utakata almost a year of occasionally meeting up with Gaara to show him a true smile, reserved and paranoid as he is. That makes his smiles even more precious.

By the time the sun rises, Gaara finds Roushi watching the sky to the northwest, and asks him why. “Son says he can smell Saiken,” Roushi admits. He probably doesn’t want to investigate it, because it means getting closer to Akatsuki.

“We should look for them,” Gaara says. “If we can rescue Utakata before they pull Saiken out of him, we have to try.”

“You don’t know that’s what they’re planning,” says Roushi, but there’s not much else a criminal organization might want from jinchuuriki and he knows it. “Fine. Instead of a safehouse, we’re heading toward the most dangerous possible house. This is fine.”

They make good time as the head northwest into Tea Country, and Roushi reports that Saiken’s smell is continuing to get stronger. They’re nearly at the coast when Roushi tells Gaara to set them down.

“It smells very…” Roushi trails off, frowning deeply. “Son says it smells like fear, or old things that shouldn’t be. Very helpful, Son. Anyway, we should be careful. Mask your chakra signature.”

“I can scout with my Third Eye,” says Gaara. “The chakra signature should be faint enough that they won’t detect it unless they’re looking for it.” Roushi nods, and Gaara covers one eye to form another from sand. “Half a kilometer ahead there is a giant pit, probably an old quarry. A large skeleton is at the bottom. There are entrances in the cliffs around the hole…” He chooses one at random and directs his eye inside. “This isn’t going to be very useful if I have to search a system of caves without chakra sensing capabilities.”

“See what you can find anyway,” says Roushi. “But be quiet, you can tell me about it later. I’ll keep watch.”

Gaara’s eye drifts deeper into the earth until it reaches a dead end. He turns it back and enters another passage. This one is empty too. The next leads to a large cavern, much too large for the single bed and chair placed far away from each other. The wall behind the chair is made entirely of wood; at its base there is a pile of cocoons that look horribly human-sized. And Gaara thinks he can see a face formed from the knots in the wood. _Shukaku_ , he says. _Can you feel the same thing Son could? Old things that shouldn’t be? I think I found them._

_I dunno. This place gives me the creeps but they might just be normal creeps. What’d you find?_

_A wall made of wood and what looks like humans in cocoons. The wall… I think it has a face._

He gets the impression that Shukaku has recoiled. _The World Tree?_ he snarls. _What the fuck is that doing here?_

 _What’s the World Tree?_ Gaara asks as he sends his eye down a side-passage.

 _The corpse and the mother of the ten-tails. Before we were born, all the raw chakra in the world was in that thing. Eugh. If they’re trying to put us back in there I’ll fucking_ slaughter _them!_

 _Not that you wouldn’t anyway,_ says Gaara.

_Not that I w—hah. Right. Find your friends and get out of there. That thing’s bad fucking news._

A long way down the side passage his eye finds them. There are eight cells along the passage just before it ends, and in the last two are Han and Utakata, lying bound on the dirt floor with seals running over their faces like lines of ants. He watches for a long time before he can determine that they’re breathing.

“Roushi,” he whispers. “I found them. How much do you know about sealing?”

“Not much,” mutters Roushi. “That’s Utakata’s area, isn’t it? So they’re sealed to keep them from trying to escape. That’s fine, if we can break them out we can get them to a seal master. Jiraiya’s not half bad, from what he says. Though that might just be him bragging. I’d say he’s our best bet if we can find him again.”

“Are sealing masters rare?” Gaara lets his Third Eye dissolve and looks around at Roushi.

“They weren’t until about thirty years ago, when Uzushiogakure fell. I was just a kid when it happened, I’d just barely deserted Iwa so I didn’t get anywhere near that whole mess. It was supposed to be a massacre, though. The Uzumaki were too good at sealing.” He notes Gaara’s wide eyes and nods. “Yeah, Naruto is probably the last one with the name. Everyone else with any sense is trying to pretend they had nothing to do with that clan. I met his mom a couple times, the nine-tails jinchuuriki. Her bloodline ability was sealing without seals. She could probably take down a bijuu all by herself. Terrifying woman. Iwa is lucky she hated front-line fighting. Uh, anyway, she was probably the last one who really understood sealing, so Jiraiya is our second best option.”

“But first we have to get them out of there without being caught. I didn’t see anyone inside, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t come back at any time.”

“What are we waiting for, then? Fly us over there!”


	8. Chapter 8

 

It goes fine until Han and Utakata are wrapped up in sand for Gaara to carry them out. Later he reasons there must have been some kind of silent alarm that sensed intruders, but when a man dressed all in black appears in front of them it’s a complete surprise. It’s like watching water drain down a sink in reverse: he _flows_ into reality like he’s pouring out of the single eye hole in his orange mask.

“I didn’t think you’d find us so quickly,” he says. “How resourceful. How did you do it?” Neither of them answers. “Well, I can’t have you getting away with my materials. And you, one-tail, thanks for coming straight to me. Now we can start the sealing.”

“Not just yet, you bastard,” says Roushi. He spits lava at the masked man, but it seems to go right through him, splattering onto the floor behind him. “Ugh. What is he, a clone?”

The man darts forward and backhands Roushi into the wall, making small stones and dust fall from the ceiling. Gaara encases him in sand and squeezes, but no blood seeps out. A moment later his sand shield barely comes up in time to stop the man from stabbing him through the neck. He can completely disappear, but he’s certainly solid when he wants to be.

Roushi pushes him back, engaging him in a taijutsu battle almost too fast for Gaara to follow. As far as he can tell, Roushi never lands a hit even with Gaara’s sand limiting the masked man’s range of movement, but Roushi comes out of it with a shallow wound on his arm. Roushi seems to have understood that the man needs to be solid to hit him, and he engages more closely, giving Gaara an opportunity to wrap sand around the man’s wrist just as he’s about to land a blow on Roushi’s jaw. To Gaara’s satisfaction, he goes through with it, and Gaara is able to crush his wrist. A fragment of bone narrowly misses Roushi’s eye, _ping_ ing off his faceguard and splattering it with blood.

The man hisses in pain and jumps back, starting to drain back out of reality. On the off-chance that he’s still solid, Gaara throws a volley of sand kunai at him. He thinks one sticks in the man’s thigh before he vanishes.

“He could be back any time,” Roushi says, leaning against the wall. “That ability of his is perfect for ambushes. Can you fly us out of here at top speed?”

Gaara’s sand picks up all four of them, and he sends a Third Eye ahead to make sure they don’t crash into a wall. It takes a lot of concentration, but he manages to get them all out of the quarry pit in one piece. He falls to one knee and keeps them in the air, heading for the last place they saw Naruto.

“Contact Naruto,” he tells Roushi over the noise of air rushing past. “Ask where he is and if Jiraiya’s willing to help us with these seals. I need all my concentration to keep us up here where that masked man shouldn’t be able to get us.”

 _Shouldn’t be able to_ apparently means nothing for the masked man. Gaara doesn’t sense him until he drops onto Han’s back and starts creating another vortex to suck Han into. Gaara manages to put a spike of sand all the way through the masked man’s leg while he’s concentrating on his transportation technique. “ _Fuck_ ,” says the man, and a volley of kunai shoots from the hole in his mask. Gaara shields himself and tries to push the man off with a wave of sand, but it passes right through him. He swings to the underside of the platform carrying Han, as if Gaara won’t be able to see him there, but falls when Gaara spikes the sand at the bottom into lances.

“If you can hear me, Roushi,” says Gaara, trying to see where the masked man fell, “please come back out soon. I don’t know if he’ll try again, and it’s hard enough to carry all of us without fighting him too.”

“We will,” says Son Gokuu’s deep voice from Roushi’s mouth. Bijuu have always been better at splitting their consciousness than humans. “Continue toward where we last saw Naruto. He says he will convince Jiraiya to help us, and that they are a day’s journey southwest of where we met them.” That means they’ll be flying through the night, and will probably reach Naruto and Jiraiya just before dawn.

Maybe Shukaku senses his worry, because he sends a wave of burning chakra to refill Gaara’s reserves. It’s like trying to use a cauldron full of boiling water to fill a teacup, and the sand platforms wobble dangerously as Gaara struggles to assimilate the extra chakra. It would be much more useful if he fed Gaara a steady amount of chakra, but he probably doesn’t have that much control. He’s obviously noticed how much trouble Gaara is having with his chakra, and he’s pretending to be angry at Gaara’s lack of skill. He’s probably worried.

The masked man hasn’t come back by sunset, but Gaara can’t allow himself to sleep. Shukaku doesn’t have the control to keep the platforms headed for their destination. Gaara never quite got the hang of sleeping for more than a couple of hours a night, anyway.

He’s promised to wake Roushi at moonrise, which with the waxing gibbous moon is a few hours after sunset. Hopefully this will all be over by the full moon, because it will be impossible to get Shukaku to do anything useful for three full days. Normally they travel to an uninhabited island and destroy everything in sight while Shukaku swears at Gaara for keeping him from slaughtering humans… but they can’t do that if it means leaving Roushi alone to fight Akatsuki.

He can’t stop himself from constructing scenarios in his head: Shukaku loses control and injures Roushi; Shukaku loses control and _prevents_ Gaara from killing a member of Akatsuki; Gaara is exhausted trying to control Shukaku and lets himself get killed.

He makes it to moonrise and lets himself drift close enough to wake Roushi. When the sun first sends pale light above the horizon, Gaara still has chakra but he’s too tired to control it. He lets the platforms fall as slowly as he can.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> fight scenes are so hard... this is why the previous works in this series were better... they were most talking, and not fight scenes.


	9. Chapter 9

Because the world is cruel, Gaara wakes up only about two hours after dawn to Shukaku yelling in his… metaphorical ear, he supposes. He sits up, rubbing his eyes and feeling like the sockets have been stuffed with cotton. The voices behind him take a moment to resolve themselves into words, and then he realizes it’s Jiraiya explaining seals to Roushi.

“—ot actually that complex, I’d bet your masked man hasn’t studied sealing with a master. He did put a hell of a lot of different kinds on there, though. Layering was smart, since it’ll take us longer to undo them, but he wouldn’t need to, to extract the bijuu. So the third seal is a Four Winds Seal,  you can tell by the way it’s pinned together…”

Gaara looks around to see Jiraiya, Roushi, and Haruno Sakura hunched over Han’s unconscious body. Naruto and his other teammate Uchiha Haromo are dozing against a tree, drooling on each other’s shoulders. No doubt when they wake up they’ll be horrified. The thought makes Gaara smile.

“Ah, you’re awake,” says Roushi. “You should be glad you got to sleep through most of this explanation. It makes no sense at all if you haven’t spent thirty years studying sealing.”

“You ungrateful brat,” mutters Jiraiya. The Four Winds Seal breaks with a flash of yellow light.

“I’m forty-five,” says Roushi.

“I was already a legend on the day you were born!”

“How many more seals are there?” Gaara asks, not wanting them to start another argument.

Jiraiya scratches his nose. “Ehh, looks like another two. Don’t be so impatient, young man.” It’s only another ten minutes before Jiraiya releases the last seal, but Han doesn’t wake up. This time it’s Roushi who answers the unspoken question.

“Son says his chakra was drained, not just sealed, and he’s still injured. We’ll have to transfuse some. Ready, Son?” He puts his hands over Han’s chakra well. With his limited sensor ability, Gaara watches a huge amount of chakra flow into Han—and he sees when Kokuou wakes up, her white chakra rising to meet Son Gokuu’s.

“That’s enough,” she says from Han’s mouth. “I’ll heal him. Thank you.”

Jiraiya is already undoing the seals on Utakata, much faster now that he knows what they are. Gaara volunteers to give him a chakra transfusion, and to his surprise Utakata wakes up almost immediately. He barely seems injured at all. His golden eyes open slowly, darting around like he’s trying to figure out where he is. “…Gaara?” He grips Gaara’s wrist weakly, looking uneasy, and tries to sit up.

“We found where Akatsuki imprisoned you and brought you here so Jiraiya could unseal you,” Gaara tells him.

“I _knew_ I was going to die,” says Utakata, glaring at Gaara’s chest. “Saiken knew it too. And now we wake up here. It seems like an illusion.”

Gaara supposes he has good reason to assume pleasant surprises aren’t real. “It’s not,” he says. “We’re still in danger if the masked man finds us again, although he’d be foolish to try to fight all five of us.”

“Five?” Utakata looks around to where Roushi is quietly talking with Kokuou, and then to where Naruto is asleep on Haromo’s shoulder. “Having this many jinchuuriki in the same place is dangerous.”

“Don’t thank me or anything,” mutters Jiraiya. He gets to his feet and says more loudly, “Well, now that I’ve helped you—you owe me the biggest favor of the century, by the way—we’d better get going. I think it’s about time we returned to Konoha. NARUTO, HAROMO, WAKE UP.”

Haromo jumps a foot in the air and activates her sharingan before she seems to recognize Jiraiya. “Pervert-sensei, you just about gave me a heart attack!” Then she notices that Naruto is still asleep, slumped with his face in the dirt. “Hey, Naruto, you lazy asshole, wake up!”

Naruto sits up, muttering, “I was awake the whole time.” Then he opens his eyes, sees the other jinchuuriki, and grins. “Woah! Are you all who I think you are? This is amazing!” He rushes over to Utakata and sticks out his hand. “Hi, I’m Naruto!”

Utakata eyes his hand and leans away from it slightly. “Utakata. You wouldn’t want to keep your master waiting.”

Naruto’s face falls. “You don’t have to be such a jerk about it, ya know. Well, maybe you’re having a bad day. You’re _definitely_ having a bad day. I’ll see you later in the mindspace, yeah?” He grins, waves, and goes to get his pack. Haromo and Sakura follow, and Jiraiya soon leads them away, southward. A few minutes later Han wakes and thanks Roushi for reviving him. An awkward silence falls.

Gaara is the one to break it. “Utakata-san, you said it’s dangerous for so many jinchuuriki to be together. Why?” He has to know _why_ they can’t be a family in the same way the Uchiha are.

Utakata stares at him like he’s stupid. “We’re weapons, Gaara. The easier it is to find us, the more people will come looking.”

“Out of proportion to how much stronger we are together?” Gaara wonders. It’s not really a quantifiable ratio, but it’s still something to think about.

“None of us is exactly stellar at teamwork,” says Utakata. His narrow eyes are directed at the space between Roushi and Han, rather than at Gaara.

“No-one is born with the ability to work on a team,” Roushi says.

“If you don’t want to be on a team it’s fine,” says Gaara, “but don’t pretend it’s because you’re afraid of _bounty hunters_.” He knows what Utakata is really afraid of, and he can sympathize. He has wounds too, but unlike Utakata he’s been taught how to heal them. However, Utakata won’t appreciate having his heart laid bare before two people he barely knows, so Gaara asks him, “Can I talk to you in private?”

Utakata gets up stiffly and walks north. Gaara follows until he can no longer see Han and Roushi. “What is this really about, Gaara?”

Gaara looks down. All his uncertainty is coming back. He remembers vividly the many times he offered his friendship to children in Suna, and got only horrified stares in return. Just because someone knows his pain _doesn’t_ mean they’re willing to spend time in his company. He’s lucky enough that he has the Taki Uchiha.

But Utakata has no-one, and that’s what makes Gaara look him in the eye and say, “Don’t you ever get lonely? You’ve been a missing-nin for a very long time, and—”

“I was born lonely, and I grew up lonely. It doesn’t matter.”

“Does it matter if _I’m_ lonely?” asks Gaara. He’s going too far. The last thing Utakata will ever admit is caring for someone else. “I—I mean, I’m not asking to work together out of pity. I… thought that we might all have had enough of loneliness, since we were born to it.”

Utakata is silent for a long time. When Gaara glances up, his face looks softer, tired. “Fine. I _am_ keeping you away because I don’t want to deal with humans. I’m bad at it and it’s a lot of work that will eventually bite me in the back.”

“You think I’m human?” asks Gaara, surprised. Utakata closes his eyes and frowns. He almost looks like he’s going to cry.

He sighs slowly through his nose. “Yeah. Yes. What they’ve done to you doesn’t change that. The way they’ve treated you…”

“I just never felt like I had much in common with humans,” says Gaara softly.

“Dammit, kid, why do you have to make me feel like I need to protect you?” Utakata won’t look at him. “Do you know how hard I’ve worked not to care for anyone? It’s like looking at myself when I was sixteen, right after my master tied me down and tried to kill me, when I still had hope that the world wasn’t as bad as it seemed.”

Gaara reaches for his hand, and Utakata lets him take it. “We’ll be stronger together,” says Gaara. “In all ways.” He understands what it means that Utakata finally told him why he left Kiri, even if he tried to say it casually.

Utakata is silent for half a minute, looking down at their hands. He looks half angry and half sad. “Yeah, yeah, you’re damn persuasive. Now please, let’s stop talking about our feelings and just go back to Han and Roushi.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter, Jiraiya says he was “already a legend on the day [Roushi was] born.” This is a lie. Jiraiya was NOT a legend when he was nine. He probably didn’t even have his toad contract yet.


	10. Chapter 10

In the end they conclude that they’re going to have to destroy Akatsuki themselves. Akatsuki moves in two-man cells, so the jinchuuriki will move in groups of three. Of course, this means they’ll need to recruit. Gaara doubts the new Hokage will let Naruto run off to hunt down S-rank criminals, and he’s never met either of the jinchuuriki who are rumored to live in Thunder Country. They _may_ be able to convince Shibuki to let Fuu go hunting with them—and of course Fuu herself won’t be hard to convince.

So Gaara and Utakata head for Taki, and Han and Roushi for Kumo. With only the two of them, Gaara can carry them on sand platforms, but Utakata refuses. He carries himself inside a bubble, not looking at Gaara. It hurts a little, but he knows Utakata will stand with him when it’s important. They just have slightly different ideas of what qualifies as important.

Shibuki has already been informed that they’re coming, so they don’t even stop by the Uchiha apartment before arriving at his office. Predictably, Utakata is silent, so Gaara has to do the talking. He bows, and says, “First, Shibuki-san, I want to thank you for letting us visit your village despite the possible danger to your people. It means a lot to all of us that you welcome us but don’t try to use us as tools of war.”

“Gaara-san,” he says, looking bemused. “Itachi may have overestimated the danger of having a jinchuuriki visit for a week out of every month. I won’t call her _paranoid_ , but she is very cautious. Ah, and this is Utakata-san, right?”

Utakata gives him a shallow bow and says nothing. “To get to the point,” says Gaara, “we’re here because of Akatsuki. Itachi has told you the details. We intend to eliminate the threat—the jinchuuriki are working as a group. We were hoping you would let Fuu join us, and that Itachi would be able to help us track down the members of Akatsuki with her information network.”

“Fuu does not have the skill to face Akatsuki,” says Shibuki. “She is low jounin level, barely an A-rank ninja. She’s also headstrong and reckless, and there’s nobody more likely to get herself killed. And anyway, she is the fastest line of communication to Itachi if she stays here. That’s how your connection works, isn’t it?” Gaara’s eyes widen, and Shibuki nods at him. “Yes, I’ll give Itachi permission to help you. We need to keep tabs on Akatsuki anyway. And if you give us two thirds of the bounty money I’ll lend you an S-rank jounin.”

“Can we have Shisui?” asks Gaara. He’ll be an asset because he already trusts the jinchuuriki, and his doujutsu is unique among all the jounin of Taki.

Shibuki laughs. “If Itachi will allow it. You’re going to stay at their house, so you might as well ask them when you get there.” He picks up a brush and a piece of paper from the pile next to him, writes something, and stamps it with his personal seal. “Here’s his mission order.” Gaara takes it and bows (Utakata doesn’t) and they leave for the Uchiha apartment.

Itachi isn’t home yet, but Shisui declares that he’ll make her let him go even if she doesn’t want to. Utakata lets Fuu rope him into chopping vegetables for curry—Gaara hears him telling her how to find and prepare local poisonous plants—while Shisui makes onion pancakes. Itachi and Sasuke come home from training, tired and happy, but when Shisui shows them his mission order they both frown. They look almost identical in their worry, except for the ten-centimeter height difference.

“This isn’t the kind of mission I would normally approve for you,” Itachi says. She edges around Shisui to get to the sink and wash her face. “There’s a high chance you’ll be badly injured, and none of the jinchuuriki have any skill with healing.”

“Untrue,” says Utakata in his flat, quiet voice. They all look at him, and he scowls at his vegetables. “I know natural medicine and some chakra-based techniques.”

“But you’re not as good as Itachi,” Sasuke says. Utakata shrugs.

Fuu turns around to look at Itachi and Sasuke. “Don’t be such worrywarts. Shisui is the best ninja in the village, and he’ll be with two jinchuuriki! Even though _I_ should be the one who gets to go.” She puffs out her cheeks, pouting.

“No,” say Sasuke and Itachi in unison. “Dumbass,” Sasuke adds. “If Shisui’s in danger, you’re in twice as much danger. You don’t have as much experience. You’re not even a jounin yet.”

“I really am the best option,” says Shisui apologetically. He leans over to kiss Itachi’s forehead, and taps Sasuke’s with two fingers. “I’ll try extra hard not to die, promise. But this is for everyone, not even just the jinchuuriki. Who knows what Akatsuki would do if they got their hands on all the bijuu?”

“Probably Gaara has the best idea,” says Sasuke.

Gaara pauses while everyone looks at him. “The man—I think the leader of Akatsuki, or at least the one in charge of sealing—implied he needed to seal the bijuu in a specific order. That was why we had an opportunity to rescue Utakata and Han, they weren’t sealed immediately. I would guess they meant to combine the power of the bijuu somehow into one big weapon. They also had something called the World Tree. Shukaku said… Can you remind me?”

 _The corpse of the ten-tails_ , says Shukaku irritably, as if he shouldn’t have to say it twice. _Our old man made us out of its chakra. If they seal us the right way they can bring it back to life. No clue why they’d_ want _to, it’s probably fucking impossible to control._

“The World Tree can be turned into a super-powerful bijuu by having the other nine bijuu sealed into it. So, yes. One big weapon that they might not even be able to control, in addition to killing the eight of us to make it.”

Shisui lets out a low whistle. “Wow. Yeah, that sounds like something that I want to prevent. Sorry, Itachi, I’m overriding your veto this time.”

“I understand,” says Itachi softly. “I don’t like it, but I understand how important it is.”

“Then it’s settled!” says Shisui, with what Gaara thinks is probably a fake grin. He claps Itachi on the shoulder. “Tomorrow we’ll go out there and kick some ass!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shibuki's such a stand-up dude, I love him


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wo-ho-hoah this one has gore in! guess who has mega ptsd from his fucked up childhooood

Before they leave, Itachi compiles a folder of all the recent reports of Akatsuki sightings at bounty exchange stations and in villages. Utakata asks Saiken to relay it to the other bijuu, and then the three of them head for an exchange station in southern Earth Country, where one of Itachi’s spies saw Kinyaku Kakuzu and his partner ‘White Death’ two days ago. When they show her Itachi’s sign, the agent tells them that Kakuzu headed northwest. Gaara misses Roushi, because although Utakata is a sensor he can’t track people he’s never met before. Gaara carries them as fast as he can toward the town of Kamasen in the exact middle of Earth Country. And four hours later they fly into an ambush.

Because _he_ isn’t a sensor, Gaara doesn’t notice until a dark blur hits Utakata’s bubble, sending it flying. “Damn,” says someone below. “I thought it’d pop. Don’t fucking look at me like that, bubbles _pop_ when you stab them.”

Gaara stops the platforms he and Shisui are on. Shisui looks at him for a moment, nods, and then completely disappears. He probably wants Gaara and Utakata to distract the Akatsuki members so he can catch them in genjutsu. Gaara tries to clamp sand around the shouting man—White Death—but he dodges. “Hey! Come down here and fight me like a man! Fucking atheists are always afraid to get a little bloody!” His partner mumbles something and he laughs. “Yeah, yeah. I guess I’ll have to take the battle up to him!” He uses a chakra-assisted jump to draw level with Gaara’s platform—Gaara floats a little higher to avoid him, and takes a cut on the leg from his scythe. But Gaara is in just the right place to grab his head with the sand at the bottom of the platform. And, feeling sick, he crushes the man’s skull. It reminds him too much of his childhood—he struggles to remember where and when he is.

The body falls a few meters away from Kinyaku, who seems to be glaring at it. Gaara is trying to separate his sand from the blood and… _fragments_ , so he almost misses when Kinyaku’s back bulges and rips open. Two enormous black _things_ come out and stand over him, and though they have empty masks instead of faces they seem to be watching Gaara. He barely manages to dodge a combined wind/fire attack, but it still blisters his skin inside his sand armor.

The ground beneath Kinyaku turns to mud (Utakata?), trapping his feet and one of the masked creatures. The other flaps skeletal wings that shouldn’t be able to lift it at all, and comes at Gaara. He dodges its continual attacks—how much chakra does it _have_?—but manages to see glimpses of Kinyaku trying to avoid Utakata’s bubbles. When it’s not throwing incredibly powerful wind release techniques at him, the masked creature is actually pretty slow, and Gaara is much more agile in the air. He starts pulling sand out of the rocky dirt of Earth Country and manages to enclose the bottom half of the creature, crushing it. It doesn’t even notice, and he barely avoids a concussive wall of air. He can now see that it’s made of thousands of what look like living, wormlike cables. So what animates it?

He settles on going for the mask, but it’s difficult for any attacks to connect because it just blows them away. It will be easier to seal the entire thing. It takes a long time to capture it, but eventually he is able to layer half a ton of sand on top of it, both crushing it and using Shukaku’s seal to make sure it doesn’t come out. He returns to the battlefield, where Kinyaku is now missing but two more of his masked creatures lie unmoving on the ground, their masks shattered. Shisui and Utakata are standing over them, looking tired.

“What happened to Kinyaku?” Gaara asks them.

“Escaped,” says Shisui, scowling. “Went underground while we were distracted with _these_ things. We’ll try and track him down, but we were waiting for you.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

“It barely matters,” says Utakata, who isn’t even out of breath. “Now that I’ve tasted his chakra I can find him again. But we might want some kind of a strategy for when we do.” He lifts his pipe to gesture eastward. “He’s going that way.”

“So, those things are completely independent when they’re outside his body,” says Shisui, “which means that even if I can stop him with sharingan they’ll still be a problem, and we don’t know how many he has. He’s also got an earth technique that makes his skin basically impenetrable. I don’t suppose either of you knows any lightning release techniques?” They shake their heads. “Damn. Me neither, I have a secondary water affinity.” He sighs and sits down on a rock. “In that case we need to surprise him from behind or use genjutsu. Do you think you two could immobilize him long enough that I could get a good look at his eyes? I don’t think he knows I’m an Uchiha yet since I only used kenjutsu to fight him.”

“If I can’t immobilize him I can at least distract him,” says Gaara.

“Yeah, sure,” says Utakata. “I’ll see if I can poison him. Let’s go get this over with.”

They find him again a few kilometers east, above ground again, and Gaara immediately grips his legs with sand.

Unfortunately, his legs are completely detachable, and he rolls out of the way of Utakata’s water blade. Cutting won’t do any good on him. But while he’s off-balance, Shisui manages to get in front of him and looks into his eyes, stopping him dead. “All right,” Shisui says. “He’s trapped. Go ahead and stab-slash-crush-slash-poison him to your hearts’ content.”

Utakata goes first with a large bubble full of what seems to be knockout gas. Kinyaku falls over backward, limp, still staring up at the sky with half-closed eyes. “This is strange,” says Utakata, bending over him. “He has two different kinds of chakra circulating in his system. One of them may be another of those mask creatures. We’ll need to eliminate both of them.”

Shisui unsheathes his sword and very casually stabs Kinyaku through the chest. “There, did that do for one of them? I should have gotten his heart.”

Utakata looks slightly sick, but he nods. “I can’t tell where the other one is located. Gaara…”

He’s supposed to use Desert Coffin to kill this man, but he really, really doesn’t want to. _Let me do it_ , says Shukaku. _It’s been way too long since I had any blood_.

“You had blood earlier today,” murmurs Gaara. “When we killed White Death.”

_Oh no_ , says Shukaku, sounding smug. _That was all you. Great job, by the way_.

“That’s not something you should compliment me on,” he whispers. “Take my body.” He doesn’t see or hear it when Kinyaku dies, and he tries to pretend he doesn’t feel it. But his sand is still sticky with blood, and the _smell_ is horribly familiar. He bites his lip hard enough to draw more blood and despises the taste.

“Got to hand it to you,” says Shisui, “you really know how to say the creepiest possible thing while talking to yourself, right before killing a guy.” Utakata glares at him, an expression Gaara didn’t think he was capable of. Shisui raises his hands in mock surrender. Then his face freezes and his hands fall back to his sides. “Fuck. How are we going to collect a bounty on this pile of sludge?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I really wasn’t expecting Hidan to be defeated that quickly. But, uh, it would actually be pretty easy to kill him permanently if you just crushed his head beyond repair. He’s reckless and hasn’t really bothered to get that good at combat because he doesn’t need it… but what are you really going to do if someone happens to completely encase your head in sand? I guess he got unlucky in going up against Gaara, whose main method of killing people is crushing, unlike most ninjas, who prefer to stab or cut.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :( sorry I didn't post yesterday, I was on a train all day and then I was moving my stuff into my new room. please enjoy this chapter about bijuu gossipping!

They do manage to collect a partial bounty after retrieving the three masked creatures they destroyed, as well as the rings and cloaks both men wore. It’s a staggering amount of money, even though it’s only about half of the eighty million ryou they should have gotten. They deliver the bodies to the bounty exchange station where Itachi’s agent works, and the boss there tells them she’d like to give them more, but what can you do? She completely understands that you can’t always leave a clean body, especially not when you’re an _amateur_. At this point Utakata leaves, tired of the woman’s condescension, and the other two quickly follow. They make camp a little way away to pass on the news.

Choumei is dozing by the fire in mindspace, leaning against Kokuou’s side. Kokuou looks up when Gaara, Shukaku, and Saiken appear, and nods. “I would like to thank you for rescuing us from Akatsuki,” she says. “From what I have heard, if it had not been for you Roushi never would have.”

“I’m so glad we have a friend like Gaara,” says Saiken happily, patting Gaara on the shoulder with one of her oozing tails. “If only Uta-kun would admit he thinks so too! He really does like you, you know.”

Gaara doesn’t know what to say to that, embarrassed but pleased, so he changes the subject. “Well, we managed to get rid of two Akatsuki members today, White Death and Kinyaku Kakuzu. How’s your team’s progress?”

“We did use your information,” says Kokuou, “but we have not yet found the pair rumored to be in Thunder Country. We have been surveilling Kumogakure and have concluded that it would be wiser to try to recruit Matatabi’s jinchuuriki than Gyuuki’s. She seems to have weaker ties to the Raikage. I believe Han and Roushi are considering speaking to both of them, however. Choumei, are you awake?”

“Mmm? Of course I’m awake. I’m always listening for gossip. I’m still mad that you didn’t let me and Fuu-chan come along, though. Hunting criminals sounds so interesting, and you can always use more luck!”

“Aw, Chou-chou, we would’ve loved if you could come,” says Saiken. “But I guess if your headman says no you have to listen. Oh, these guys were scary strong, though! Fuu-chan might have gotten hurt!”

Gaara lets the bijuu chat for a while before he interrupts. It’s nice just to sit, leaning back against Shukaku’s arm, and listen to them. Choumei and Saiken are two of the most talkative, and he gets the impression that they’re the only two who kept in contact since they were sealed. Eventually, though, he asks if Choumei can contact Itachi.

“I don’t think Ita-chan has ever heard me talk from Fuu’s mouth before!” Choumei laughs her buzzing laugh. “Anyway, you have a couple choices. It looks like the last sighting was almost a week ago in Yu. Ita-chan thinks once they hear they’re being hunted they’ll start lying low, so you might have to act fast.”

“Who did they see?”

Choumei is silent for a moment while she talks to Itachi, then she says, “Sakuretsu Deidara and Biwa Juuzo. Sasuke-chan says, just follow the explosions.”

“Great!” says Saiken. “Can’t wait for my revenge. We can set out tomorrow, after we’ve had a nice long rest. Oh, Gaara-chan, can I talk to you for a little before you go to sleep?” He follows Saiken a little way away from the fire, Shukaku watching them suspiciously while pretending to nap. He looks up at her questioningly, and she leans down to whisper, “So _obviously_ we have to trick Uta-kun into admitting he likes you. Got any ideas?”

“Trick him?” Gaara frowns up at her. “I wouldn’t want to trick any of my friends. If he’s not comfortable saying something I don’t want to—”

“Ooooh my gooooosh,” says Saiken. Her eye stalks move in an exaggerated version of rolling her eyes. “You’re soooo boring. That’s probably why he likes you so much. Okay, let’s not call it _tricking_ him. Let’s call it putting him in a situation where he’s more comfy telling you he likes you. Does that make you feel better about it?”

“I think we should be using our energy to take down Akatsuki before we start trying to become better friends.”

Saiken sighs dramatically. “I wish Shisui was a jinchuuriki. He’d definitely help. Fine, fine, we’ll wait. But you’re going to look really dumb if one of you dies before he can tell you!”

In Gaara’s opinion, if one of them dies he will have much bigger things to worry about. But he says, “Thank you for your concern, Saiken. I’m grateful to have a teammate who cares so much.”

She grabs him with one of her tails, in what he assumes is a very slimy hug. At that point, Shukaku decides to leave the mindspace, and Gaara opens his eyes in a hollow among the rocks. Shisui is eating and Utakata seems to be asleep.

“I’ll take watch,” says Gaara. “You should rest.”

“Oh, you’re back. It’s all right, I don’t mind keeping watch.”

“It will be more efficient if you sleep. I don’t really need to, but you should be at your best.”

“What do you mean, you don’t need to sleep? You’ve still got a human body, haven’t you?”

“I wasn’t allowed to sleep for the first twelve years of my life.” Gaara looks up at the moon, because he doesn’t want to see pity on Shisui’s face. “I think my body adapted so I wouldn’t need to.”

“What the _fuck_? Who said you couldn’t sleep?”

“Any time I slept Shukaku took over my body and started killing people,” he says, tired and expressionless.

“Do I need to give him a talking-to?” says Shisui angrily. Then, “Oh, no, I sound like Itachi. I’m turning into a mother.”

“It’s better now,” Gaara tells him. And he’s grateful, once again, that someone cares enough to be angry on his behalf.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a fight scene I'm reasonably happy with! and gaara's ptsd. I might have to start updating ever other day because fight scenes are HARD and also I have school now.

Itachi’s contact in Yu tells them it’s been eight days since anyone saw Sakuretsu and Biwa, but that Sakuretsu wouldn’t shut up about the festival they were going to in Suna. All three of them find this suspicious—what Akatsuki member would broadcast his plans without a good reason? It’s either a setup for an ambush in Suna or he’s going somewhere else entirely, but they can’t agree on which one it is. Eight days ago, says Gaara, Akatsuki didn’t yet know they were being hunted, so they would have been more likely to set up an ambush. Shisui disagrees; they _were_ being hunted, just not by jinchuuriki, and if they didn’t know jinchuuriki were after them there’s no reason for an ambush.

Utakata doesn’t share his thoughts at all, except that “If we don’t go after them, what else will we do? This is our only lead.”

So they turn around and head for Suna. Gaara is, in a way, dreading it, because he hasn’t been _home_ in three years, and it never meant anything good to him but his heart grew in that dry soil. When the scrub of western River Country gives way to sand and bare rock, he starts to feel like maybe nothing at all has changed, that when he goes home his father will still be there, stern and impassive. He keeps glancing at Utakata out of the corner of his eye to make sure he’s real. Gaara does, after all, have his best friend’s brother and another jinchuuriki with him. It shouldn’t be so hard to remember. It is, anyway.

They land on top of the wall around Suna, and Utakata stares down into the village. “I still remember their chakra from when we fought. If they’re here, I should be able to sense them, but it will take some time.” He goes silent, perfectly focused, and Gaara watches the lights below. It’s all so familiar; he even remembers going to the festival they’re setting up. He was five years old, trying to pay for grilled sweet potatoes, but the vendors all hid when they saw him so Shukaku just took some. He never went back to the festival, because he didn’t want to get angry and destroy all the beautiful things he saw.

“Missing home?” murmurs Shisui. His eyes are soft as he watches a group of women putting up paper lanterns in a nearby street.

“If I ever had a home,” says Gaara, “this wasn’t it. But… I miss it anyway.”

Shisui puts an arm around his shoulders and pulls him close, letting him rest his head against Shisui’s. “I kind of know the feeling. You know, we might be able to convince Shibu-san to let you stay in Taki for good, when this is all over.”

Gaara glances at Utakata, who must see the movement in his periphery, because he tenses. “I’m not sure if I could accept now, however much I want to. There are others who have no home there.”

“I don’t need you looking out for me, kid,” says Utakata, very nearly glaring down at the village.

“Of course not,” says Gaara softly. “If you want me to stop looking out for you, Utakata-san, I will.” He’s betting on the fact that Utakata likes him just a bit too much to tell him to stop.

“You’re impossible,” says Utakata. “Stop whispering and let me concentrate.”

Gaara smiles just a little, and Shisui gives him a thumbs up with the hand still wrapped around his shoulders.

After almost an hour, Utakata slumps tiredly and says, “I think I found them.” He starts rubbing his forehead. Possibly frowning for an hour straight has given him a headache. “They’re on the other side of the city. It’s unlikely either of them is a sensor, but we should cloak our chakra anyway. We’ll take the wall to get closer and I’ll confirm.”

Gaara sends his Third Eye ahead to look for them. He’s working on lipreading (because, as Roushi says, he doesn’t have a Third Ear technique) so he manages to catch some of what they’re saying when he finds them.

“…ay in one place,” Biwa is saying, fingering the hilt of his enormous sword. “Makes me…” Something. Probably nervous.

“Relax,” or possibly “Chill out,” says Sakuretsu. “Worst case… someone… find us…… fight… we have some fun fighting. Best case scenario, we have some fun at a festival…”

“… boring,” says Biwa.

After that Gaara thinks Sakuretsu says “Suck it up,” but he’s not sure, and it’s not important. He lets his Third Eye dissolve into sand and says, “I have positive confirmation that it’s them you’re sensing. As far as I can tell, they really are here for the festival.”

“These people are so _weird_ ,” says Shisui. “We have a worm man with five hearts, a completely normal guy who’s a bit of an asshole, two shark guys, a guy who’s a _puppet_ , and a pretty explosion release user who _really_ wants everyone in Yu to know he’s going to a festival. I don’t know how Akatsuki ever gets anything done.”

“Both of the shark guys seemed to be pretty professional,” Gaara says.

“Yeah, go figure. Anyway, we should probably get them outside the village to minimize collateral damage. Gaara, I hate to say it but you’re the most obvious bait.”

“No,” says Utakata. They both look at him, but he has no justification to add.

“They might not know you’ve escaped yet, so we want to keep the element of surprise. We _certainly_ don’t want them to know we have two jinchuuriki. And Gaara’s at his most powerful here in Wind Country.”

“The element of surprise would be better served if you pretended to be a bounty hunter and they didn’t know we have any jinchuuriki.”

Shisui gives Utakata what Gaara is thinking of as a _your motives are utterly transparent_ look. “You think they’d bite?”

“I _think_ I saw Sakuretsu say he was looking forward to fighting…” says Gaara. “Though it’s not the most solid information to base a plan on.”

“Literally the worst thing that could happen is they don’t go for it,” says Shisui.

“The worst thing that could happen is they start fighting you inside the village and because of your unwillingness to endanger civilians they kill you,” says Utakata.

“I’ll send in a shadow clone. Happy?”

“Never in my life.” Utakata sighs. “But your plan is all right.”

“Jinchuuriki are such a tough crowd,” says Shisui as he makes two shadow clones. They bound down from the wall, and Shisui says, “Come on, let’s get out of the village and find a nice place for a battle.”

They stop half a kilometer moonward of Suna and wait. Gaara hides himself underground and cloaks his chakra, leaving a Third Eye to watch.

When Sakuretsu arrives, his voice is so loud that Gaara can hear him clearly even from underground. “Just so you know, it was suuuper obvious you were luring us into a trap, huh? The clones were a nice touch, considering Juuzou would’ve slaughtered you if you came in person. Oh, hey, is that the jinchuuriki we totally already beat? Guess Leader-sama wasn’t making that up, huh?”

Biwa says something in a less carrying voice—Gaara thinks it’s “Deidara, please get your head out of your ass for five minutes.”

“Fuck off, Juuzou. I’m just happy I have a bigger audience for my art this time. It always feels a little lacking when just one person gets to experience how magnificent it is, huh?” Sakuretsu turns to Utakata and Shisui, who are in defensive stances. “I guess Rokubi-san already knows, but you can’t have too many encores. And now, without further ado!” Something appears in Sakuretsu’s hand—as soon as he throws it into the air Shisui has flickered behind him, slashing for his arm with a tantou. Sakuretsu barely dodges, and still gets a deep cut. Biwa seems to decide it’s not his fight, and runs at Utakata. It looks like they aren’t very good at teamwork.

While Biwa is trying to land a hit on Utakata, Sakuretsu jumps up onto an enormous white bird that seems to have expanded out of his hand. If Roushi is to be believed, it’s made of chakra-infused clay and doubles as an explosive. The bird starts spitting out small orbs at Shisui, who easily dodges the resulting explosions.

Since Sakuretsu is unlikely to touch the ground any time soon, Gaara moves to where Utakata’s fight is happening. Biwa seems to be at a disadvantage in dry Wind Country, but Utakata has the small container of soap for blowing bubbles, and it doesn’t affect him. He’s popping poison-filled bubbles in Biwa’s face now, and Gaara thinks that if he can hold the swordsman still Utakata will win easily. So he waits until Biwa is directly above him, and lunges upward to grab his ankles, submerging him two feet deep in the sand. Utakata takes advantage of his confusion and surrounds his head with a bubble that fills in black and explodes.

The water clone sloshes down onto the sand, soaking Gaara. He makes sure his chakra is well cloaked and gets as far away as he can, as fast as he can. The next moment he’s very glad, because the blood-iron sword comes down right where his head was five seconds ago.

He brings the sand Biwa is standing on up to wrap around his legs, and crushes them. This time it really is Biwa, who curses and spits a stream of water from his mouth to lift him. Gaara can’t move wet sand, but he can throw dry sand kunai at Biwa, forcing him to dodge on legs he isn’t used to yet. Utakata forms another bubble, aiming for his head, but catches and destroys his left shoulder instead. He must have an incredibly amount of chakra, because he creates a new arm out of water too. When Utakata gets his head again, he’s substituted himself with a clone and is nowhere to be seen. After watching Utakata look around warily for almost a minute, Gaara emerges.

“Do you think he abandoned his partner and ran?” asks Gaara.

“Probably. When Shisui finishes his fight I’ll track him. He isn’t going far—too close to complete chakra exhaustion.”

They both look up at Sakuretsu’s bird, which is dropping what look like stylized spiders that skitter around Shisui, trying to crawl onto him as he flickers continuously away from them.

“He needs a way to get up to where his opponent is,” says Gaara. “I’ll lend him a sand platform.”

“Kid—” Utakata cuts himself off, and sticks his hands into his sleeves, scowling. “Knock yourself out. Just don’t get blown up.”

“Shisui! I’ll take you up there. Get on my platform.”

“Yes sir! Try and get me close enough to make eye contact.”

Gaara goes with him to better direct the platform, and ends up shielding them both from several very large explosions. When they draw level with Sakuretsu, Shisui shouts, “Hey, asshole!” And Sakuretsu looks into his eyes, scowling. His face loses all animation, eyes becoming blank and distant.

Shisui continues to stare intently at him. “Don’t… let down… Got to… get… information…” After five minutes or so, Shisui relaxes. “I’m keeping him still now, can you finish him off?”

Why does Gaara always have to finish them off? “Can I borrow your sword?” he asks, resigned. “Shukaku, please, don’t make me crush him. We—we have a bounty to collect, remember?”

 _Spoilsport_ , grumbles Shukaku. He has never seemed to care much how that kind of death affects Gaara. His thirst for blood is more important to him, and sometimes he tells Gaara it will toughen him up. It only makes him feel sick, every time. So now he holds Shisui’s tantou to Sakuretsu’s throat, closes his eyes, and slashes across it.

The moment Sakuretsu dies, every one of his sculptures explodes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...yes, deidara really does tell everyone exactly where he'll be just in case they want to fight him and he can show off his art. HOW CONVENIENT.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to try really hard to remember to update every day. Hopefully the story will be done soon! Thank you for reading <3 <3

“Gaara, Gaara, you idiot, wake up. If you die I’ll kill you, got it? Open your eyes. Gaara.” Words wash over him without revealing any meaning. “You _should_ be fine. _Wake up_.”

He tries to open his eyes, but he can’t get any part of his body to move. He drifts deeper into darkness.

_Hey, wake the fuck up. I think your friend is fucking crying. It’s embarrassing and your passed-out ass is even more embarrassing, so get up. I know you’re not dead, asshole._

_Shukaku?_

_Who the fuck else. Are you gonna get up or not?_

_I’m trying…_

_Try harder. Wait, I know, I’ll just give you a bunch of my chakra. You’ll be up and about in no time and I won’t have to sit on my tail bitching at you._

A wave of force washes through Gaara’s body, and he convulses. It feels like his bones are being pulled apart, resonating against his flesh against his skin. He thinks he might be screaming but he can’t separate his throat from everything else that’s _ringing_.

“Gaara? Gaara, what’s wrong?” Hands push down on his shoulders, two points where pressure stabilizes him instead of compressing him into the ground. He uses them as anchors, draining Shukaku’s chakra into them. There’s a hiss from above him, but the oppressive feeling of Shukaku’s chakra fades as he dilutes and mixes it into his own.

Finally he opens his eyes. Utakata is bent over him, frowning slightly, and he lets out a shaky breath when he sees Gaara awake. “How do you feel?”

“I wish I didn’t,” murmurs Gaara.

Utakata lays a hand on his forehead. It’s burning hot. “I suppose you don’t have a fever, then,” Utakata says.

When Gaara focuses his eyes, he realizes that both of Utakata’s hands are red and raw, covered in fluid-filled blisters. “What happened to your hands?”

“Shukaku.”

Gaara’s eyes widen when he realizes what that means. “I’m sorry! I didn’t realize I was draining his chakra into you!”

“It’s all right. I’ll heal.” Utakata tucks his hands into his sleeves and sits back. “Can you move?”

Gaara pushes himself slowly into a sitting position, only now realizing that his head was pillowed on Utakata’s lap. His skin feels raw and tender, like he just regrew it from scratch, and the light seems to be coming from the mouth of the cave they’re in. “What happened?”

“When you killed Sakuretsu his bird exploded. You and Shisui were caught in the blast, but you took the worst of it. I wasn’t able to track Biwa because I had to make sure you two didn’t die, so he got away. Not that he’ll be much use to Akatsuki in his current state. Shisui should be fine, with some scarring.” Gaara glances over to where Shisui lies on a bedroll a meter or so away. His face and left arm are wrapped in bandages, and his right ankle is splinted. “I want to take him back to Taki so a real healer can look at him.”

“Shibuki won’t be pleased if we cause his best ninja permanent injury,” murmurs Gaara. A thought strikes him. “And we effectively secured one bounty out of the four we went after.”

“If you really think it’s worth it,” says Utakata tiredly, “I can find out where Biwa went. I can kill him with very little trouble as long as he hasn’t met up with anyone. It has been half a day.”

“Can you sense him nearby?”

Utakata stands abruptly. “Wait here. I’ll get him.”

“Utakata-san, it’s a bad idea to—”

“ _Wait here._ You need to rest.” Utakata’s stare has enough weight of its own that it pushes Gaara to the floor. He closes his eyes, wishing he had the strength to argue.

“Please stay safe. I’m counting on you.”

“Yeah.”

While Utakata is gone, Shisui doesn’t stir, and Gaara hopes that Utakata somehow put him to sleep, because otherwise he’s been unconscious for too long to ever wake up. Gaara tries to meditate, but can’t clear his mind, and nobody is in the shared mindspace. He’d thought at least Choumei would be, had hoped for Saiken, but the fire is dark when he gets there, illuminated only by hundreds of paper lanterns and the dim red light of Akatsuki’s clouds in the sky.

He leaves, and waits silently in the cave, listening to the wind outside.

It’s a couple more hours before Utakata returns, long enough that Gaara feels the moon rising behind his head. He hears a bubble popping, and the sound of half a corpse dropping to the ground. “I’m back,” says Utakata. He slumps against the wall next to Gaara.

“How long has it been since you ate?” Gaara asks him.

Utakata grunts in reply, but after a moment he gets up and retrieves a package of dried meat from one of the scrolls. He chews laboriously for a minute and then says, “Thanks for reminding me. You hungry?”

“If we have anything soft, maybe.”

“Feel free to check for any scrolls full of udon that we missed.” Utakata closes his eyes and tilts his head back, still chewing slowly. Gaara doesn’t have the energy to get up, so he closes his eyes too and listens. Utakata has always made much less sound than other people; even his chewing is politely quiet, and his breathing is as calm as it always is. What’s new is that he’s sitting close enough for Gaara to feel the small amount of heat he radiates. Maybe Saiken’s idea worked after all.

“Thank you,” Gaara says after a while.

“Don’t mention it,” says Utakata flatly, as if it’s a command rather than an idiom.

“You’ve done so much for me,” Gaara insists. “More than saving my life. I’m glad I was able to meet you.”

“You’re such a kid,” mutters Utakata. “This kind of thing doesn’t matter. What matters is surviving. You can talk about the power of friendship until you pass out, but having someone smile at you doesn’t keep the hunter-nin off your back. Having someone to protect doesn’t get you anything but injured.” He sighs. “I don’t want you to have to learn that the hard way, though.”

“Perhaps it truly doesn’t make you stronger. But what keeps me sane is knowing there’s someone who will be happy to see me. Knowing that there is a place where I can rest. You haven’t gotten to rest for years, have you, Utakata-san?”

Utakata’s face goes hard and cold. “Don’t tell me to ever expect to be safe anywhere. You’ve been running for what, three years? My village betrayed me when I was just a bit older than you and I’ve been hunted for three times that.”

“Then I suppose I have you beat,” says Gaara, unsure whether to let his amusement or his sorrow show in his voice. “My village betrayed me when I was born, and my father started hunting me when I was four. Not that it’s a competition.”

“Then how do you think there’s anywhere in this world for you?” Utakata’s voice is still soft, but he’s upset.

“There isn’t,” says Gaara. “Yet. Just because no-one else made a place for me doesn’t mean I can’t make one. It’s a bit of an investment but I think it will pay off in the long run.” The phrasing makes him smile, thinking of Itachi telling her disinterested siblings about the work she does for Shibuki, managing Taki’s money. “I’d like you to be there, but if you would rather be on the run from hunter-nin I won’t force you. Not that I could.”

Utakata sighs tiredly. “After knowing you as long as I have, it would be foolish not to put my faith in you. But I don’t understand why you would put faith in me. You know I’m a coward. You know I don’t _like_ people. I’m a cynical bastard and I’m always trying to get out of doing anything. Why me? Just because I’m a jinchuuriki?”

“When I was afraid I was a monster that slaughtered hundreds of innocent people,” says Gaara. “Now I’m better. I want to see who you are when you’re not afraid.”

“I don’t think I’ll live up to your standards,” mutters Utakata. “Still, thanks, I guess.”


	15. Chapter 15

Though he’s still healing, Gaara flies them all back to Taki at near his top speed. It takes four days, and every time they stop Utakata kneels by Shisui to make sure he’s still alive. By the end, Gaara is pushing himself faster, afraid that Shisui will die and it will be _his fault_ , no matter how difficult the nearly-full moon makes it. Utakata asks to stay by Shisui while they fly, nearly exhausting his healing chakra.

Itachi meets them at Taki’s south gate, pale and tense. When Gaara sets Shisui and Utakata down, she runs to him, hands moving over his head, arm, chest to find out why he won’t wake. After a minute, some of her tension eases and she sighs, “He’s just asleep. Exhausted. I’ll take him to the hospital.” Gaara and Utakata trail after her, unsure where else to go, and end up sitting in a waiting room until Itachi comes back. Utakata, who has scarcely been in a building for nine years, is twitchy, or at least his version. _His_ version of twitchy is sitting completely still in an exaggerated posture of relaxation, eyes slitted open just enough to watch everyone who goes by.

When Itachi returns she takes them back to her house. Fuu is lying on the couch with her arm flung over her eyes, but jumps up when Itachi softly calls, “We’re home.”

“So? Is he okay? Is he gonna be okay?”

“He’ll live, at least. The staff are hoping he’ll make a full recovery.”

Fuu crashes into Itachi and wraps her arms around her, probably crushing Itachi’s lungs. She’s taller than Itachi is now. “He’s the strongest person I know, besides you. He’ll be fine. Otherwise I’ll beat him up.”

“Well,” says Itachi, stroking Fuu’s hair, “you’ll have to get through me first.” She seems to remember that they have guests, and turns around. “I’m sorry, please make yourselves comfortable. I’ll make tea. Sasuke is out on a mission right now, so you won’t see him unless you stay for a few days. What are your plans?”

“We have some money to deliver to Shibuki,” says Utakata, who had insisted on stopping by a bounty exchange station to drop off Biwa’s corpse. “After that I suppose we’ll leave again.”

“Aw, stay!” pleads Fuu, grabbing his arm. He looks much more alarmed than necessary, in Gaara’s opinion. “It’s _so boring_ being stuck in the village and you only stayed for one day last time!”

“The sooner we leave, the sooner we can eliminate the rest of Akatsuki, and the sooner you can go on missions again,” says Utakata, eyeing her warily.

“But even if I go on missions I won’t get to hang out with you! I mean, I guess I would, in mindspace, but it’s not the same. I wanna spar with you and hear cool stories and you can show me all the poisonous plants and I can ride in your bubbles and maybe learn some cool water jutsu even Shisui doesn’t know! And there’s some really cool stuff in Taki, I bet you’d like the five thousand waterfalls. I guess you’ve seen waterfalls before…” Utakata glances at Gaara, who is trying not to laugh. Fuu continues rambling about all the things she and Utakata can do, even as she starts getting out ingredients for a hot pot and piling them onto the counter. She hands him a knife and he seems bemused to find himself chopping vegetables again.

Itachi, who still hasn’t learned how to cook, sits down with Gaara and his bingo book. She uses a thick red marker to cross off the four missing-nin they have eliminated. The ones that remain now are Hoshigaki Kisame, Sasori of the Red Sand, and the masked man who is not in the bingo book at all. When Itachi asks about him, Gaara tells her and she goes even paler than normal.

“I’ve met him,” she murmurs. The marker traces out a striped mask on the back of the bingo book, not the one Gaara saw but with the eye hole in the same place. “He calls himself Uchiha Madara, and at the time I thought it really was him, but now I’m not sure. Madara should have died seventy years ago.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about him? I know that he has the ability to… teleport, more or less, and become insubstantial. Presumably he has the sharingan, or he wouldn’t claim to be Uchiha Madara.”

“I only met him once, and I’ve never seen him fight.” Itachi chews on her lip, tracing the edges of the mask she drew again. “He hates Konoha, and I believe he may have been working with Danzou, but that won’t be very helpful to you.”

Gaara’s heart pounds, just once, against his ribs like a sledgehammer. “Oh,” he says faintly. It pounds again. “The moon is rising.”

“How do you know?” asks Itachi.

“I always know where the moon is. It’s full right now.” He’s struggling to breathe.

“That’s very impressive,” says Itachi. “You’re like a moon expert.”

“No, you don’t understand…” _You held me back yesterday, but not today.  Today I WILL have blood._ “On the full moon, Shukaku… I’m going to kill someone…”

“Gaara? Do you need me to restrain you?”

“You can’t restrain him! If I lose consciousness he’ll only get _stronger_.”

“I can put him to sleep.”

_Don’t you fucking dare, you little brat. I’ll have blood even if it has to be yours._

“He doesn’t want…” But it isn’t just Shukaku’s happiness or even Gaara’s safety at stake. “I’ll leave the village. I can come back in two days. Just, come with me to make sure I d-don’t hurt anyone?”

Itachi takes Gaara’s hands and gently uncurls them from the fists he’s making. “I won’t use my eyes to control him without your consent, but are you sure this is wise?”

“Without _his_ consent,” Gaara insists. Shukaku’s laugh reverberates through his head. “Please…”

When they stand up, Utakata is already watching Gaara warily. He must be able to feel Shukaku’s rising bloodlust. “I’ll be back,” Gaara chokes out. “Sorry to leave you here. Just a few days. We need to go.” He wrenches the window open and steps out into the air, onto a platform of sand. He’s not sure Itachi is following him until he passes over the north wall of the village and he hears her call, “Stay safe, Gaara.”

After that it takes all his concentration to direct Shukaku _away_ from the blood he can smell, further into the forest.


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LAST FIGHT SCENE, THANK GOODNESS.

He doesn’t become fully conscious again until just after moonset on the last day of full moon. He’s lying on a heap of blood-soaked sand—he prays that the blood is from deer or bears, and not humans, even though crushing animals is bad enough—staring up at the brightening sky. The forest is entirely silent, and he finds when he sits up that Shukaku has flattened almost half a mile of forest. It’s his least favorite way to wake up.

It only gets worse when a flat voice behind him says, “Oh, good. You’re done. You’re the cause of all this trouble. I’ll be happy to seal the one-tail and discard your corpse.”

Gaara gets to his feet, a little unsteadily, and sees _six_ people in Akatsuki cloaks, none of them familiar from the bingo book. He will not be able to deal with this by himself. “Shukaku,” he whispers, “please wake up. I need to you tell Saiken.” Shukaku grumbles in his sleep, and desperately Gaara stabs him with a spike of chakra.

_What the fuck? I earned a fucking nap._

“Your nap will be permanent if you don’t tell Saiken that _six_ members of Akatsuki are here.”

_Ugh. Fine.  I’ll even help you fight like the generous, benevolent fucking god I am._

Two of the Akatsuki members approach, and Gaara can see that the rest have spread out in an arc, almost surrounding him. The first holds out a hand and some force pushes him violently off his feet to land fifty meters away. Mostly unhurt, he gets to his feet again. Is it better to try to engage them until Utakata can get here, or to run toward Taki?

He calls up a sand platform to hover far above them, barely managing to keep it in the air when the force pushes him downward. One of them has summoned an enormous lizard, which becomes invisible before his eyes. At least three of them are actively setting up attacks, and he just _can’t_ keep track of them all. So he traces the trail of devastation back toward Taki and flies away.

His sand defends him from several invisible attacks, but soon enough that _force_ is pulling him backward. He replaces himself with a sand clone, making sure his chakra is masked, and manages to wrap his sand around one of the enemies. “Seal him,” he hisses at Shukaku, and his bijuu’s seal markings crawl up the small pyramid. The man isn’t powerful enough to break free, but his companions might be, together, so Gaara hurls it several kilometers in the opposite direction of Taki. “Shukaku,” he whispers, avoiding a dozen _missiles_ one of them shot from his arm, “is the metal in their faces magnetic?”

Shukaku starts laughing wildly in his head. _Oh, this will be fun. Give me your arms._ Shukaku wraps sand around Gaara’s arms, approximating his own enormous claws. He raises one toward the nearest enemy, feels for the magnetic metal, and pulls.

It’s not as easy as it should be—there’s some foreign chakra interfering—but he manages to hold one of them in midair, struggling, and throws him far away too. It won’t take him long to get back, but Gaara needs the momentary advantage. His sand shield stops another barrage of missiles, but it still throws him backward, and he finds himself wrapped by—what can only be the tongue of an enormous, invisible lizard. His sand scrapes the inside of its mouth until he starts to smell blood, but it doesn’t release him until he severs its tongue. The smell of fresh blood has always had a strong effect on him, and he’s starting to feel it again. The world seems far away and somehow terribly loud. _Focus, dumbass. Utakata won’t be here to save you for at least an hour. If you can’t stay alive till then you’re a worthless excuse for a jinchuuriki._

He does survive, somehow. He finds himself pressed painfully against the ground or thrown by the concussive force of explosives or pierced through the arm by the beak of an enormous bird, and he abandons all strategy to let instinct keep him alive. Shukaku is screaming constantly in his head, advice or insults or both. As the sun rises, he sees that all of his enemies look eerily similar, with rippling purple eyes, pale skin, and orange hair. It must mean something, but he doesn’t know what.

He’s lying on the ground, shaking, trying to force his muscles to move, while Shukaku’s sand lashes out at the enemy. That’s when Utakata comes, riding a massive wave that sweeps them all away. He stands in front of Gaara and blows a minefield of bubbles. “Can you move?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” Gaara mumbles, but he tries to push himself up on his arms anyway. “Watch out.”

Utakata engages three of the Akatsuki members at once, dodging so gracefully it almost doesn’t look like he’s in danger, until the one with force powers smashes two fallen trees into him. Gaara smells blood again, but he can’t see Utakata because he’s _not getting up_. He looks back at the enemy and sees that the one furthest away is suddenly missing his head. And then another, with only a grey blur to show that Uchiha Itachi was there. She doesn’t manage to catch any more of them by surprise, though. The one that stands in the middle gathers up the bodies and summons an enormous gate shaped like a demon’s face.

Itachi has vanished, and the two dead shinobi walk out of the gate with the same flat expressions as before, completely whole. Itachi strikes again, briefly blowing a truly enormous amount of fire at the Akatsuki members—one of them _absorbs_ it. While they’re distracted Gaara has the chance to bring his sand up the back of the gate and rip it from the ground. It’s too strong to crush, probably reinforced with chakra, but he can throw it far away. Itachi takes the hint and beheads another one of them. Although they always seem to know what’s behind them, she seems to have a knack for finding their blind spots.

The gravity user finally looks angry. He crushes her to the ground, but only a flock of crows flies away. Gaara recognizes it as a clone technique because he’s seen her do it before, but they seem confused and wary.

She flickers around the battlefield, aiming kunai and her sword at the Akatsuki members, barely getting away when they notice her. Gaara supports her as best he can by obscuring their vision, pulling on their metal jewelry (?), and wrapping sand around their legs so their attention is divided. It works spectacularly, and Itachi is able to kill all but two of them. Those two are the most dangerous, though, the ones who could repel her: the gravity manipulator and the one who absorbs ninjutsu. They look around for Itachi, but she’s nowhere to be seen—so they return to Gaara.

He’s mostly healed from the injuries he’s accumulated, and he leaps into the sky. The gravity manipulator pulls him back suddenly, and he can’t avoid a bolt of lightning from the ninjutsu user.


	17. Chapter 17

He is really, really tired of waking up sore and confused after passing out, but he’s even tireder of waking up with the smell of blood coating his mouth. _About time, you little asshole. D’you know how hard it is to get anything done around a lightning user when you’re passed out? REAL FUCKIN’ HARD._

Itachi is on one knee in front of him, repelling what the gravity manipulator throws at them, and he can smell blood on her. Her leg is injured, but she’s doing an admirable job anyway with just her sword. Gaara brings up his sand shield in front of her so she can rest. “I’ll take us underground, if you want,” he offers.

“Lend me some chakra instead,” murmurs Itachi. “I just need enough to heal myself and make a few clones.”

Gaara’s eyes widen as he holds out his hand. “How long have I been unconscious?” He keeps his chakra steady and slow as it flows into her, though his control isn’t as good as hers.

“Maybe half an hour.” She touches her free hand, glowing green, to her ankle. “I will go underground, and my clones will end this. Be ready.” Gaara didn’t know she was an earth release user, but clearly she’s at least chuunin level. She slips into the ground and her clones flicker away, and Gaara’s sand shield takes a shattering impact from an entire tree behind him.

Then the rain of rocks and branches from the front stops, and he forms his Third Eye to look. The gravity manipulator is in the process of blowing one of Itachi’s clones away, even as a blur behind him strikes. His head drops to the ground, and Itachi’s remaining clone vanishes. For half a minute, it’s completely quiet, and then Gaara walks on shaky legs to where Utakata fell. The blood smells old, which either means he’s stopped bleeding or he’s just dead.

Gaara’s sand picks up the splintered logs and tosses them aside. Underneath is Utakata, whose left leg is completely crushed and whose skin is burned and blistered, maybe from a partial transformation. He’s covered in some kind of thick, clear fluid that must have come from Saiken.

“Utakata, Saiken, can you hear me?”

An enormous bubble emerges from Utakata’s mouth. When it pops, Gaara can hear Saiken’s voice: “He’s not doing well.” Another bubble. “You have to get him to a healer.”

“Itachi!” Gaara shouts. “Please help him!”

Itachi appears silently behind him and kneels by Utakata. “I need more chakra to heal him.” She takes Gaara’s hand and uses it to scan Utakata’s body, which would be amusing in any other situation. Instead, Gaara is tense with worry as she places his hand on Utakata’s shattered knee and starts clearing shards of bone. Slowly, the burns on his skin heal on their own.

He wakes up around the time that all his visible wounds are healed—barring, of course, his left leg. Gaara has been holding his hand, so he notices first when Utakata’s fingers tighten. Then his eyes open wide and he tries to stand up. Itachi presses him back onto the ground, murmuring, “Don’t try to move yet. We’re not in any more danger, but you won’t be able to walk until… well, until you can get a prosthesis.”

Utakata pushes her hand away and sits up, taking in his bloodstained kimono and the smooth skin where his leg ends halfway down the thigh. He grips Gaara’s hand even tighter, looking grim. “Let’s get out of here.” He lets Gaara pick him up, and they follow Itachi back to Taki. Utakata doesn’t let Gaara take him to the hospital; he insists on going straight to the apartment. He doesn’t have much more healing to do anyway, he says.

When Fuu sees him she frowns and—with what for her is a lot of restraint—comes to sit on the floor next to the couch where he’s resting. She takes his hand and starts telling him about her training with high-level wind release techniques. Itachi, who seems mystified by all normal social interactions, makes tea.

Gaara meditates and enters the mindspace, and is unsurprised to find Saiken, Utakata, and Choumei already there. Saiken is explaining the battle with the six strange Akatsuki members to Son Gokuu and Kokuou and their jinchuuriki, but pauses to say hello when she notices Gaara. “These guys were absolutely ridiculous, I’m telling you! I didn’t even get a good look at all their powers, Gaara could probably help me out with that. Does anyone remember what rinnegan actually does? I, um, forgot.”

“Dumbass!” screeches Shukaku. “Don’t you remember our old man had rinnegan?”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Do you remember how he was the Sage of Six Paths? THAT’S WHAT THOSE WERE, IDIOT. THOSE WERE THE SIX PATHS.”

Son Gokuu puts a hand over Shukaku’s face, and then sits on him. “Calm down, brother. You are giving me a headache, and I do not even have a physical body. And _this_ is beneath my dignity.”

Shukaku starts clawing Son, trying to throw him off, and the other bijuu laugh.

“While Shukaku is busy,” says Roushi, “hello, Gaara. Thought you might want to know how our hunting is going.” Gaara edges away from the fight and comes to sit next to him by the fire and at Kokuou’s feet. “We finally managed to find those two who attacked us before, we just had to pick up their trail. Son’s a great tracker, you know.”

“They’re dead now,” says Han. “Lot of trouble, though.”

Gaara suddenly remembers. “Shisui managed to get some information out of one of the Akatsuki members we fought! When he wakes up he should be able to tell us how many more there are.”

“And can we please get rid of the World Tree?” Choumei asks. “Just, smash it or something. That thing’s _very_ bad luck.”

“First we have to deal with that masked man,” says Roushi. “I really don’t like him.”

Gaara spends a while talking to them all—even Naruto and the nine-tails show up for a little while—until Fuu catches on and tells Gaara and Utakata to wake up so they can eat. Utakata is even more silent than usual. He doesn’t answer at all when Fuu tries to engage him in conversation.

Sasuke arrives halfway through the meal, looking tired but happy. He looks around, confused, and finally asks where Shisui is. When Itachi tells him, his face goes stony. “I don’t blame you, Gaara,” he says stiffly, and walks right out of the door without ever sitting down.

Gaara sighs. He’s _tired_. When Shisui wakes up he’ll have information on Akatsuki, and Gaara will have to meet Han and Roushi and go out to fight again. All he really wants to do is convince Utakata to stay in Taki, and maybe help him get a new leg from one of the puppeteers in Suna. He doesn’t want to move at all; he can barely motivate himself to chew his food, despite the fact that he hasn’t eaten in three days.

But he can’t be hopeless. He has to be bright for Utakata. So he forces his back straighter and doesn’t give in to the impulse to lay his forehead down on the table and meditate into nothingness.

Utakata can tell, though. He glances sideways at Gaara and murmurs, “Go and sleep.”

Gaara shakes his head. “Trying to sleep alone will be useless.”

Utakata chews on his lip, probably trying to decide whether to offer to sleep with him, but Fuu gets there first, pulling out his chair and picking him up under his arms. “Come on, then. Itachi, you can clean up, I have important work to do.”

She drops Gaara on the bed she and Sasuke share, and curls around him. “Relax. You feel like a rock that’s about to split in half. Re. Lax.”

It takes a long time, but in Fuu’s arms he does relax. He doesn’t quite sleep—instead he drifts. And it’s okay.

To Gaara’s great relief, no-one asks him to go out and fight. He suspects Utakata might have something to do with it, because Gaara is one of the most powerful jinchuuriki and by all rights he should be on the front lines. Instead, he pushes down his guilt and lets Fuu show him and Utakata around the village. He spends a lot of time reading, trying to forget his anxiety. Shisui wakes up a few days later, and after receiving at least a dozen hugs he tells them about the remaining members of Akatsuki. Roushi, Han, and Yugito go to get rid of the last of them, and Gaara has the chance to meet Matatabi, the two-tails.

Everything is fine. They’re safe. But he’s still so anxious, all the time. He doesn’t sleep for weeks, until the other jinchuuriki come home.

Yugito is a tall woman with very long hair and healing wounds all over her arms. Fuu is immediately enraptured by her, just like she is with all jinchuuriki. Han and Roushi look tired, but not badly injured. All of them are surprised when they find out Utakata can’t walk, because in mindspace he looks like he always has.

Fuu drags them all out to one of the training grounds to ‘camp’ because her house isn’t big enough for six jinchuuriki. Because it looks like it might rain, Gaara builds a house out of sand. They all lie in his house, listening to Fuu, who is doing all the conversational work. She starts speculating about what each of their home villages is like, so that they’re forced to correct her, and soon everyone relaxes and begins to talk. Fuu has a gift, Gaara thinks. He’s even able to doze off, with Fuu on one side and Utakata just barely touching his hand on the other. And he wakes before dawn to Han making tea with his steam release.

The next day, Shibuki gets a reply from Cliff Country’s daimyo, saying that she doesn’t mind if the jinchuuriki build a house near Taki. She’s probably motivated by self-interest, assuming that they will become loyal to Cliff Country, but the result is all that matters to Gaara. On the way to the place Fuu wants to show them, Utakata directs Gaara to collect plant clippings from inside his bubble. He wants to start a garden, he says, has always been interested in both poisons and medicines derived from plants. Gaara smiles down at the bag full of Utakata’s garden.

Gaara is a little surprised that Fuu’s location is a large tree, a smaller version of the one that looms over Taki, but he shouldn’t be, considering her preoccupation with treehouses. There’s plenty of room for a house up in the branches, and everyone seems to like it. The next few days are occupied with setting up wards—Utakata’s sealing expertise is very useful there—and gathering materials. After that, Yugito has to leave, because she was given leave for a mission, not for a life.

Utakata plants a garden. Han starts going into Taki to buy clay for his ceramic sculptures. Gaara and Roushi visit the village often to meet the children there. And every couple of days, Shukaku manifests in his bijuu form and just sits, staring at the moon. He seems… peaceful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This dragged on too long and I don't know why. This must be how Kishimoto felt. I wanted to put more detail into this but I'm tiiiiired of posting. Some day hopefully I will be able to write about Sasuke's demon cat shenanigans and Itachi's genin team, but it'll be a while. Thank you for reading <3


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